Neil Gaiman's Sandman Will Be Adapted by Netflix

Update 7/1/19: Netflix has confirmed it will produce a 10-episode first season of The Sandman in conjunction with Warner Bros. Television. Neil Gaiman, David Goyer, and Allan Heinberg will co-write the first episode.

After decades of trying to make it happen, Hollywood may finally bring that long-awaited Sandman adaptation to life at long last.

No, this is not a dream.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, the rights to adapt Neil Gaiman's beloved comic book series have been sold to Netflix for a steep, albeit unspecified price, with Gaiman coming onboard to produce alongside superhero screenwriter extraordinaire David Goyer and Allan Heinberg, the latter of whom will serve as showrunner of the proposed live-action series.

The Sandman has been something of a white whale for would-be adapters, after several efforts to give the story the silver screen treatment sputtered out over the years.

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Gaiman had been stumping for Sandman on the small screen, instead of a cinematic take, for several years. In 2017, he told Yahoo, "I'm hoping that the success of American Godswill show Time Warner that maybe something as huge and shapeless and strange as Sandman would be best suited to television. Those comics are so filled with so much story, and so much humanity and such visual candy -- try to stop us if we have half the opportunity."

The Sandman ran for 75 issues from 1989 to 1996 and centered on a dark lord named Morpheus, the lord of story, who inhabits the realm of consciousness alongside the Endless, including Destiny, Death, Destruction, Desire, Despair, Delirium, and Dream.

Warner Bros. Television reportedly attempted to shop the series out to HBO as well before Netflix stepped up for the deal, which is still not formalized but may rank as DC Entertainment's most expensive series ever.

In addition to Starz's American Gods, Gaiman's work can also currently be seen on-screen in Amazon Prime Video's adaptation of Good Omens.