Few works of art manage to become as popular and beloved as The Sandman by Neil Gaiman has over the years. The story is finally coming to live-action through an ambitious Netflix series, one that has also stirred quite a bit of concern within the fandom as to whether it can live up to the insanely high standards of its comics counterpart, both in terms of narrative and characterization.
Well, if you were to ask that question of Gaiman himself, he’d simply reassure you by explaining that his oversight on the project has assured a level of faithfulness that few adaptations today could aspire to achieve. During The Sandman panel at Netflix Geeked Week, the writer explained why the upcoming television show is sometimes “exactly the thing that I’ve always had in my head.”
“You know, Tom [Sturridge] is Morpheus. Once you see him on the screen you go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the guy in the comics. That’s what he apparently sounds like and that’s how he moves because we haven’t really seen him move. Sometimes it’s deeper or weirder or just different, but it’s always deeper or weirder or different in ways that make it more interesting, not less. Having Viv [Acheampong] taking the character that Joe Orlando had created in the comics a long time ago and going ‘Is there any reason at all that Lucienne can’t look like [Acheampong] but have pointy ears?’ and going, ‘None that we can think of.’ Great!”
The Sandman on Netflix is trying to depict the story in a completely different medium, which is why some discrepancies here and there are to be expected. When it comes to the big picture, though, Gaiman is continuously assuring his fanbase that this adaptation will have the spirit of the original work.
We can only hope that ends up being the case when the show makes its Netflix premiere on Aug. 5.
