When looking at Gaiman's prolific body of work, none feels more impactful than "The Sandman." His comic chronicled the ethereal adventures of Dream of The Endless. Due to its esotericism, non-linear plots, and phantasmal settings, the series was considered impossible to adapt. How do you adapt a scene where Dream challenges Lucifer to a cosmic battle of imagination?
Versions of "The Sandman" adaptation languished for decades in development hell. Gaiman heard pitches from multiple major studios and even attempted a film adaptation with Warner Bros. that would have starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But in 2019, nearly 30 years after he began shopping it around, Gaiman signed a deal with Netflix. "The Sandman" hit the streamer in August 2022, starring Tom Sturridge as Dream. Almost immediately the show was embraced by fans for its dreamy adaptation.
What made the Netflix production successful was that it refused to shoehorn the source material into a traditionally linear TV plot. The "Sandman" books are a series of digressions from the present tense. The Netflix adaptation keeps those tangents intact: Dream visits a convention of serial killers, meets up every hundred years with a man granted immortality, and even has that battle of the minds with Lucifer (Gwendoline Christie).
However, its unique storytelling meant "The Sandman" Season 1 had a lackluster finale in comparison to where the series will go. Still, it was delightful moment-to-moment and rocketed to the top of Netflix's ranking. Of course, Gaiman would go on to repeat his success with Season 2 of "Good Omens."
