Decades in the making, the prospect of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series coming to the screen is looking a little less like a dream and more like actual reality. Today, the prolific author shared the first casting details for Netflix’s adaptation of the cult favorite Vertigo/DC Comics series. The big news: Tom Sturridge will bring his heavily lidded eyes to the series as the main character Dream, the Lord of the Dreaming, while Game of Thrones’ own Gwendoline Christie will co-star as Lucifer — you know, the ruler of hell. Netflix says that the series “follows the people and places affected by Morpheus, the Dream King, as he mends the cosmic — and human — mistakes he’s made during his vast existence.†The rest of the cast includes Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne, Charles Dance as Roderick Burgess, Sanjeev Bhaskar as Cain, Asim Chaudhry as Abel, and Boyd Holbrook as the Corinthian.
Gaiman is writing the Netflix series with Allan Heinberg. Gaiman’s book series began back in 1988 and he has returned to the world occasionally over the decades. In the three decades since, there have been many attempts to bring it to the screen, though none successful. A film version starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in the works recently, but fell apart in 2016 over creative differences. Audible, meanwhile, has been putting together its own audio drama version of the project, with the first three books already out and second and third installments of the project planned. The Netflix version, per The Hollywood Reporter, already has an 11-episode order, though presumably it would continue onward if it does well. The streaming service hasn’t announced any dates for the series to premiere. It’s probably a very expensive and time-consuming operation, you know, designing and filming in the Dream Realm.