TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s comic-book series The Sandman in the works at Netflix

Netflix is adapting Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed comic-book series The Sandman, the streamer has announced. The streaming media giant has also raised the curtain on the initial cast of the television adaptation.

Tom Sturridge is fronting the cast as the protagonist Dream, lord of The Dreaming and one of The Endless seven siblings who embody the central concepts of the universe. He is also called Morpheus.

Nonbinary actor Mason Alexander Park has been roped in to play Desire, a nonbinary character in the source material, and Kirby Howell-Baptiste will play Death, who is portrayed as an impossibly pale young woman in the comic-book series which has horror, dark fantasy elements and oodles of black humour.

The initial cast of the show also includes two actors from Game of Thrones ― Charles Dance as Roderick Burgess, charlatan and magician, and Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer, ruler of Hell.

Sanjeev Bhaskar and Asim Chaudhry are on the cast as Cain and Abel respectively, Boyd Holbrook as escaped nightmare The Corinthian, and Vivienne Acheampong as Lucienne, chief librarian, and guardian of The Dreaming.

Gaiman, who is co-writing and executive producing the series with David S. Goyer and Allan Heinberg, recently told a publication, “For the last thirty-three years, the Sandman characters have breathed and walked around and talked in my head. I am unbelievably happy that now, finally, they get to step out of my head and into reality. I cannot wait until the people out there get to see what we have been seeing as Dream and the rest of them take flesh, and the flesh belongs to some of the finest actors out there. This is astonishing, and I am so grateful to the actors and to all of The Sandman collaborators — Netflix, Warner Bros., DC, to Allan Heinberg and David Goyer, and the legions of crafters and geniuses on the show — for making the wildest of all my dreams into reality.”

The show has been filming for some time now.