Neil Gaiman confirms how Netflix is changing the timeline of The Sandman

The Sandman creator Neil Gaiman is still out here teasing Netflix’s forthcoming adaptation of his landmark comic, and how it’s changing for TV.

The Sandman, about a group of powerful beings who represent different aspects of human nature, originally debuted in the late 1980s and ran through the ’90s. Gaiman has previously confirmed that the show will move things forward to the present day so that things are more in line with what modern audiences expect, but now we’re getting more details on the timeline.

In The Sandman volume one, “Preludes and Nocturnes,” Dream is captured by a group of occultists in the year 1916. They originally planned to capture and control his sister Death, but ended up with him. Dream remains confined in a glass box for decades before escaping in 1988. This is the year that will change on the small screen. Rather than Dream escaping in the ’80s, Gaiman made the decision to bring that event forward. “The Netflix version is going to begin in 2021, so Morpheus will have been kept prisoner in the Netflix version for 105 years rather than 70 years,” he told Digital Spy.

Changes like this doesn’t come without challenges. Telling the story in the modern day brings up a lot of questions. Thankfully, Gaiman is fully aware of what needs to be tweaked in order to tell the story

"We’ll take that one, see what that does. It’s already in the scripts, it does interesting things because… if we were creating this character now, what gender would the character be? If we were creating the character now, who would they be? What would they be doing? And going on from there."

So far as production goes, The Sandman is still very much stuck in lockdown. “We’re working with Netflix, we were meant to start shooting at the end of May,” he said. “Given this COVID world, everything is on pause.”

In the meantime, Audible has adapted The Sandman as an epic audiobook dramatization, covering the first three volumes of the graphic novels: Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll’s House, and Dream Country. The audiobook also boasts a crazy big cast featuring stars like James McAvoy (Dream), Kat Dennings (Death), Michael Sheen (Lucifer), and Andy Serkis (Matthew).

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