Last week, Netflix revealed the first seven cast members from its upcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. So far, it’s looking right. Some of the names include Tom Sturridge (Dream), Gwendoline Christie (Lucifer) and Charles Dance (Roderick Burgess).
Still, there were a lot of important characters not included in the first announcement, including fan-favorite characters like Death. The list was also missing John Constantine, a DC Comics character with his own series who plays a part in the early chapters of The Sandman. Constantine is a character with an established history outside of Sandman; he’s even had his own films and TV shows. Remember when Keanu Reeves played him in that one movie?
We single out Constantine’s absence from the first group of Sandman cast members because, merely days beforehand, there were tons of rumors that Taron Egerton (Kingsman: The Secret Service, Rocketman) had the role. Egerton actually already played the character in last year’s Sandman audiobook from Audible, which is due to return to adapt more of the comic. Deadline mentioned that Egerton was “attached to an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman,” and fans figured he might reprise his role fr the live-action series.
Neil Gaiman clears up John Constantine confusion
Neil Gaiman cleared things up over on his Twitter before rumors could get out of control, confirming that they “haven’t yet announced the casting of Constantine”:
Now even Deadline gets very confused by IMDB's inability to tell the Audible version of Sandman from the Netflix version.
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 27, 2021
https://t.co/ePlvR0bzwP
You can't get from the Lucifer TV series to Sandman #3 or even Season of Mists. And we haven't yet announced the casting of Constantine. (That article is just confusing the TV version with the @audible_com version.) https://t.co/5UwyhnljHa
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 31, 2021
Basically, the main culprit for the confusion is people confusing The Sandman audiobook with The Sandman Netflix show: Egerton is in one but may not be in the other, despite how good a fit he would be for the part. Now that cast members are starting to be announced for the Netflix show, hopefully things will become more clear.
The Sandman comics feature tons of characters in the first volume alone, most of which we expect to appear in the show. “Seven down, hundreds to go,” Neil Gaiman promised on Twitter. There are still a lot of characters to be revealed, such as the rest of the Endless, and of course, John Constantine!
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