DREAM A LITTLE BIGGER

For 30 years, filmmakers have tried and failed to adapt Neil Gaiman’s revered comic THE SANDMAN. As the long-awaited Netflix adaptation launches, Total Film speaks to Gaiman, showrunner Allan Heinberg and the stars to ask: is this the stuff of fans’ dreams?

- KEVIN HARLEY

The way source author Neil Gaiman tells it, Netflix’s incoming adaptation of The Sandman comes from both the heart and art. Working with Gaiman (American Gods, Good Omens) and executive producer David S. Goyer, the showrunner is TV, comics and Wonder Woman (2017) writer Allan Heinberg, who turned out to have met Gaiman long before work on the show began. “I’m not sure if he was at college at this point, or working as a writer in New York,” says Gaiman, “but I met Allan, even if I didn’t know I’d met him, in about 1996 when I signed his page of original art from [1994 Sandman graphic novel] Brief Lives.”

A former DC fan, Heinberg drifted away from comics during the so-called ‘DC implosion’ of the late ’70s, until The Sandman revived his ardour. “I was a huge fan at college,” he says. “My boyfriend at the time was not a comics fan. But one of the first gifts he gave me was a page from Brief Lives. It was a big deal not just because it was an actual Sandman page, which were incredibly rare even then, but because it came from a boyfriend who had no fondness for comics. It was a significant gift in many ways. Then I found myself at a signing for [Gaiman graphic novel] Mr. Punch with [artist] Dave McKean and Neil. I stood in line for hours and Neil signed my page, and my book, and it’s been on my wall ever since.”