News 'Sandman' TV Series a Go at Netflix

I don't, I could see them switching most of the DC characters out for new original characters. Are Cain and Able specifically in it as DC characters, or as the Biblical characters?

 

Both. They operate the Houses of Mystery and Secrets which exist in the Dreaming and the waking world. They're also the biblical Cain and Able. Destiny of the Endless was also a preexisting DC character and the host of several DC horror anthologies.

 

Oh, I didn't realize they were a part of the bigger DCU, I thought they were just in Sandman and it's related series.
Have any of the other DC characters who play a significant role in the series appeared onscreen yet?

 

They weren't really, especially at the time. They were hosts and narrators for DC horror comics.

 

Casting for the series
The guy cast as Dream looks like a young Neil Gaiman
The actor playing Able looks like he stepped from a page from The House of Secrets

 

I've never heard of most of those people, but none of them really stand out as being "wrong" for me.
The only person I know there is Gwendoline Christie, and I love that she's Lucifer.

 

Oh, man, I'm really loving these casting choices! Especially Charles Dance as Roderick Burgess, which is inspired casting! I adore Gwendoline Christie and she will be wonderful as Lucifer!

I'm not familiar with Tom Sturridge's work (which might a good thing, to have a clean slate), but for some reason I know his name and I can't figure out how.

Either way, I'm so very excited about this series!

 

Cue the outrage that a woman is playing Lucifer from the usual places. Never mind how awesome the casting is.

 

Also cue the same outrage about two men of color playing Abel and Cain and a black woman playing Lucienne (formerly Lucien).

 

It's shame David Bowie isn't around anymore, I would have loved to have seen if they could have gotten him to play Lucifer.

 

I had the same reaction! Looked him up on Wikipedia and I still can't figure out why his name is so familiar to me.

 

I don't have much of an opinion about the casting. Changing Lucien is random (the race doesn't matter at all, but why the gender swap?), but doesn't particularly bother me. Hell, after the shit show that is the audio adaptation of Sandman, as long as Kat Dennings is nowhere near the show then I'm fine with the cast (although we don't have news on Death's casting yet, it has to be better then her). My favorite casting, just based on looks, is Abel's. Maybe its just the picture that was used, but he seems to fit. Cain I'm feeling neutral about, but could go either way. I don't think that Christie is a particularly good actor or suited for the role she was cast in, but its not like Lucifer has a giant role on the story. Sturridge, Dance and Holbrook I don't have opinions on.

As for the show in general, it could be very good or really bad. Netflix has a pretty spotty track record, and it would be an easy show to mess up. I currently have low expectations but would like to be surprised.

 

I wonder who they'll cast as Death.

 

I hope it's Kat Dennings again.

 

Visually she might not look much like the comics character, but voice is perfect for the character. So as you can probably imagined, I absolutely loved it when they cast her for the audio version.

 

Boyd Holbrook, the actor who is playing The Corinthian has talked a bit about what it took to get the role, and the show in general. It apparently took a while to hear from them, and he had at least one meeting with Neil Gaiman.
He also says that his contract was for "seven, five years whatever", so it sounds like they're at least looking at this to be a fairly long multi-season series.
They started filming around Christmas, and are scheduled to finish up around the summer.

 

It sounds as if they are planning about a season for every two volumes, which makes sense as the series generally alternated between a six month story and a few months of stand alone stories. From the character descriptions it sounds as if the first season will cover The Dollhouse.

 

We just got a ton more casting!

Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death
Mason Alexander Park as Desire
Donna Preston as Despair
Jenna Coleman as Johanna Constantine
Joely Richardson as Ethel Cripps
Niamh Walsh as young Ethel Cripps
David Thewlis as John Dee
Kyo Ra as Rose Walker
Stephen Fry as Gilbert
Razane Jammal as Lyta Hall, Rose
Sandra James Young as Unity Kincaid
Patton Oswalt as Matthew the Raven

They're all great casting choices, but I'm especially excited about Howell-Baptise and Oswalt for their respective roles!

 

Yeah, this is going to have an unbelievable cast.

 

I hesitate to say so for obvious reasons, but Howell-Baptise has me scratching my head a little. Not because I'm opposed to a black person in the role in the slightest, just that from a character design standpoint being white is kind of Death's whole visual thing. And to be clear, I mean literally alabaster white, not in terms of her ethnicity (which like Dream, I always read as deliberately ambiguous.) Are they just going to go with it and put her in body make-up? Does that not have some problematic undertones for a person of colour to portrayed as such, or does it being so starkly theatrically white cancel that out? I'm probably just overthinking it.