Filming updates: The Sandman, The Umbrella Academy and Shadow and Bone

We’ve got a bevy of updates on highly anticipated shows for you today, starting with Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s classic comic book The Sandman.

The Sandman is a difficult series to describe. It’s about Dream, one of several immortal beings who each represent different aspects of the human condition. The comic series goes on many strange, surreal tangents throughout its run — we meet William Shakespeare, visit an alternate reality where cats rule over humans, go to a serial killer convention, and much more; all of it hangs together on the page, but it will take a deft hand to translate the sprawl to the screen.

Happily, Gaiman thinks the show is on the right track. “It feels like Sandman, he wrote on his Tumblr. “I don’t know if that means that people who watch TV will like it – although I hope they will – but I suspect that if you like Sandman and you want to see it on the screen, then you’ll like this. (I also think Tom Sturridge will be a star after season one of Sandman drops.)”

He also revealed that filming on season 1 has ended:

"Well, we’ve finished principal photography on Season 1, and now we all have to be patient while the VFX and suchlike are done, music is written and recorded, and so on. No, I don’t know any release dates, or even when the trailer will be released."

If Netflix pulls this off, it’ll have something very special on its hands.

The Umbrella Academy season 3 is almost done filming

And The Sandman isn’t the only Netflix fantasy show making progress. Elliot Page recently shared on his Instagram Stories that the studio was “getting close” to the end of filming on The Umbrella Academy season 3.

When last we left the super-powered, dysfunctional Hargreeves siblings, they’d returned to the present after a stint in Dallas in the 1960s (long story) only to find that their father Reginald Hargreeves was alive and that he had raised a whole new group of superpowered crime-fighters known as the Sparrow Academy, one of which is their deceased brother Ben.

I assume that’s a long story, too, but we’ll have to wait a while to find out the details.

Shadow and Bone season 2 is “dangerously close” to beginning production

Finally, Shadow and Bone producer Shawn Levy told Collider that the second season of Shadow and Bone is on the cusp of filming:

"Scripts written, heading into production shortly, in great shape, very much favorable to the characters in the world that we built and the Grishaverse that was put on screen in Season 1. But building out from there. Eric Heisserer still at the helm as creator, showrunner and getting kind of dangerously close to heading into production."

Set in a fantasy world inspired by czarist Russia, the first season of Shadow and Bone was a hit for Netflix, and fans are eager to catch up with Alina, the Darkling, and the rest of the cast as soon as possible. Obviously, the streaming service intends to give its subscribers all the fantasy they can handle.

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h/t CBR, Screenrant