Neil Gaiman: Netflix’s The Sandman will hit you “like a truck”

After spending decades shooting down bad pitches for adaptations of The Sandman, author Neil Gaiman is finally seeing his beloved comic book come to life in live-action thanks to Netflix. Arriving in August, The Sandman is one of the year’s most anticipated shows. The show will terrify you, surprise you, make you cry, and so much more.

For Gaiman, the most important thing about making an adaptation of his seminal comic was that it must be done right. In the past, he’s stopped both TV and big-screen versions from moving forward. With the new adaptation becoming the most expensive TV show DC Entertainment has ever produced, there’s no doubting that Netflix is the perfect home for the adaptation.

Gaiman knows all too well about book-to-screen adaptations; he’s been involved to varying degrees in adaptations of American Gods, Good Omens, Coraline, and more. He’s had a lot of success with them, but he knows how a poor adaptation can have adverse effects on the property as a whole. There was certainly a little apprehension before embarking on the Netflix version.

“I didn’t have faith that we’d always get here,” Gaiman told Total Film. “But I had faith that the important thing was to stop bad versions being made. Once a bad version is made, you never quite come back from that.”

"It may sound silly, but when I was 14 or 15, my favorite comic was Howard The Duck. Steve Gerber, Gene Colan, Frank Brunner, satire, madness, glory… I was so excited when I heard George Lucas was making a movie. And then A New Breed Of Hero came out. Howard The Duck became a bad joke. I never wanted that to happen to Sandman and I saw scripts that would have made that happen."

The Sandman is a story that transcends space and time, myth and legend. No two episodes are the same, whether it’s historical fiction, horror, or one of the many other genres weaved into the plot. “Anybody who sees Episode 1 and goes, ‘I like it! This is like a big historical drama, only with a bit of occult-y stuff in it’… they’re not going to know what’s coming. The rest of The Sandman is going to hit them like a truck.”

"Episode 6 will kiss it and make it better. However traumatised you were by 5, Episode 6 will make you awkwardly dab your eyes to disguise the fact that you were having a cry because, oh my God, this thing is so good."

If Gaiman is happy with how the show has turned out, hopefully fans can relax. “I can’t promise this is the Sandman of your dreams, but I can promise I’m proud of what we’ve done. I can say that Stephen Fry as Gilbert is waiting for you, Boyd Holbrook as the Corinthian, the serial-killers’ convention…”

Check out this new still from The Sandman! 

When Morpheus escapes his imprisonment from Roderick Burgess (Charles Dance) and his group of occultists, he returns to his realm of the Dreaming, the place we go when we fall asleep. However, in his absence, he learns that his realm has fallen into decay. In this latest shot released by Total Film, we see him sitting within his broken kingdom, with his resident librarian Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong) standing by his side. Take a look here.

The Sandman premieres on August 5 on Netflix. You don’t want to miss it!

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