‘The Sandman’ Teaser Finally Confirms a Release Date

Jenna Coleman as Johanna, Tom Sturridge as Dream in 'The Sandman.'

Netflix is running its annual “Geeked Week” this week, making announcements, and releasing trailers for a host of shows and movies all themed around genre.

One of the most exciting pieces of news is word that the long-awaited adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s classic comic series ‘The Sandman’ will launch its first season on the streaming service this coming August.

To boil it down to the basics, the story is this: “When the Sandman, aka Dream (Tom Sturridge) — the powerful cosmic being who controls all our dreams — is unexpectedly captured and held prisoner for over a century, he must journey across different worlds and timelines to fix the chaos his absence has caused.”

Of course, this being Neil Gaiman, there is a lot more to it than that. A lot more.

‘Sandman’, for those who might be unfamiliar, was a 75-issue DC/Vertigo comics series published in the 1990s. Gaiman's own one-line synopsis was: “The lord of dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision,” yet the sprawling series takes in pantheons and mythologies from across the globe, via threads about fantastical quests, serial killers, road trips, and short stories only tangentially connected to the core narrative. Many tales featured Dream's siblings, the Endless: Destiny, Death, Destruction, Despair, Desire, and Delirium. There are some characters – such as members of his own family – who are happy to see Dream return, while others are not so sure this is a good thing.

Gaiman himself has noted that the first, 10-episode season of the Netflix show only covers to the end of ‘The Doll’s House’, the second collected trade paperback of the comics. There are 10 in all, and that doesn’t even include the many spin-off stories.

Attempts have been made in the past to turn this one into a movie, though the streaming series format (not to mention the budget and scope afforded by the likes of Netflix) most certainly feels the natural home for something so sprawling. It’s hard to imagine a film franchise even the size of, say, ‘Harry Potter’ doing justice to what Gaiman and his various collaborators brought to the page.

Though the writer has directly overseen adaptations of his work before (‘Good Omens’ particularly), here he was more of a consultant, with Allan Heinberg and David S. Goyer developing the series with Gaiman and then running the show.

Alongside Sturridge, the cast includes a batch of reliable performers, genre stalwarts and new faces: Boyd Holbrook, Patton Oswalt, Vivienne Acheampong, Gwendoline Christie, Charles Dance, Jenna Coleman, David Thewlis, Stephen Fry, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mason Alexander Park, Donna Preston, Vanesu Samunyai, John Cameron Mitchell, Asim Chaudhry, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Joely Richardson, Niamh Walsh, Sandra James-Young, Razane Jammal and, announced as part of the news on this one, Mark Hamill, who voices fan-favorite character Merv Pumpkinhead.