The Sandman creators talk adapting its darkest, most disturbing story

In the fifth episode of The Sandman, “24/7,” John Dee (David Thewlis) walks into a diner with Dream’s magical ruby clasped in his hands, determined to use it to reveal all the lies of the world. He uses it to toy with the people inside the diner, first in small ways, and then over the course of the episode, making them do unspeakable things. The episode adapts the story “24 Hours” from The Sandman comic book, which is widely regarded as one of the most disturbing stories in the history of the medium.

Adapting this storyline for live action was always going to be a challenge. The issue gets crazy dark, so much so that many fans have admitted that they were scared to watch it. Their fears were entirely vindicated; the episode really does go there. It’s a total horror show, and one outstanding hour of television.

Speaking to Total Film, showrunner Allan Heinberg talked through the difficulties of filming this episode. “It ended up being the second episode that we shot because of the COVID situation in the UK,” he said. “In the comics, it’s narrated by an omniscient narrator, who gives us what’s happening in everybody’s mind at different points in the story. We had a much more naturalistic approach to it, so we had to figure out how to introduce the characters in a way that makes you fall in love with them before the dark strain starts to take over.”

"It was a challenge but then, also really rewarding because it freed me up as a writer to think outside of the comics in a way, and really dig into telling the same story through a different lens. It liberated me, I think, for the rest of the series, too, to make it as full-bodied an adaptation as possible. That it really lived on the screen as its own entity, even as it’s indebted to the source material."

Neil Gaiman wanted Allan Heinberg to “make television”

People are already calling The Sandman one of the best comic adaptations ever created. The show feels exactly like the comic, and yet there are a lot of things it does differently. And that is how Neil Gaiman himself wants it. “I got to be in the lovely position of just getting to encourage Allan to make television,” the author said. “I couldn’t explain to him the decisions that I had made 32 years earlier, that were based on the structure of a comics page, and why I did this and why you turn the page here, and so on and so forth.”

"I was going, ‘You don’t have any of that and you don’t have this imposed structure of 24 hours and 24 pages. So we can do other things. Let’s build it as drama, and let’s make people care. Let’s do the same things, emotionally, to people that the comic did. But we can do them as television,’ and we did."

The final product is as terrifying, if not more so, then it was on the page. It clearly honors the source material while building on it so that it works for television.

The Sandman is currently streaming on Netflix. Please watch it if you haven’t already because I’m desperate for another season!

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