Oh bless, Gwendoline Christie is going to play Lucifer in Netflix's The Sandman
TV Features Gwendoline Christie
Netflix has finally set the main cast for its forthcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s DC comic, The Sandman, a dark fantasy that has been in the works for quite some time now. (In fact, it was first picked up a year and a half ago. Can anyone even remember a single thing about 2019 at this point?) While there were early concerns that this project might roam Development Hell for a while, Gaiman recently assured fans and Seth Meyers that there was an active set after a brief COVID-related pause. Today, Netflix reveals the players that are on said hot set: Tom Sturridge, star of Starz’s Sweetbitter, will take on the role of Dream, Lord of the Dreaming realm. Netflix also added Vivienne Acheampong, Boyd Holbrook, Charles Dance, Asim Chaudhry, and Sanjeev Bhaskar to the intriguing ensemble.
And for a serious kicker, Gwendoline Christie will step in to play Lucifer. If that’s not an example of us finally having something nice, we don’t know what is. Her working alongside Dance will also make for a small Game Of Thrones reunion, bringing together Brienne Of Tarth And Tywin Lannister. In a statement, Gaiman expressed his excitement for the ensemble:
“For the last thirty-three years, the Sandman characters have breathed and walked around and talked in my head. I’m unbelievably happy that now, finally, they get to step out of my head and into reality. I can’t wait until the people out there get to see what we’ve 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’m 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.”
Check out the cast breakdown below, per Netflix:
- Tom Sturridge is Dream, Lord of the Dreaming
- Gwendoline Christie is Lucifer, Ruler of Hell
- Vivienne Acheampong is Lucienne, chief librarian and trusted guardian of Dream’s realm
- Boyd Holbrook is The Corinthian, an escaped nightmare who wishes to taste all that the world has in store
- Charles Dance is Roderick Burgess, Charlatan, blackmailer and magician
- Asim Chaudhry is Abel and Sanjeev Bhaskar is Cain, the first victim and the first predator, residents and loyal subjects of the Dream Realm.
Though the 11-episode series is in production, a premiere date has not been set as of yet. Mind you, none of this should be confused with Sandman, Audible’s audio drama based on the same graphic novel, which Variety reports has been renewed for two additional seasons.
65 Comments
Was hoping she’d be Desire, but this is me not complaining.
I thought about this as well, but someone else online made the excellent point that that role ought to go to a non-binary actor.
I’m more interested in Delerium, she was always my favorite after Death. Any chance they could de-age Helena Bonem-Carter?
What is this nonsense? Outrageous that they didn’t even try to cast the inspiration for the character, 1989 David Bowie.
Didn’t they, though?
EDIT
I have absolutely no issues with the casting of Christie in the role. Tom Ellis was great in the Fox/Netflix series but definitely not as the Sandman version of the character.
I’m not sure if you’re playing dumb here or not but David Bowie died in 2016 and I know a lot of people that are still bummed out about it… Are you trying to make a joke about a dead person 4 years in their wake right now…?
Cuz that’s not really humour to me that’s just you being a troll. Go home.
Same reason I’m a little relieved they didn’t get to Kira in the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure live action film, or Kaz Miller/half the cast, apparently, in a Metal Gear Solid movie:
As an aside for those who don’t know, the Cain and Abel in Sandman have a connection to the DC Universe that predates Sandman. They first appeared in the Horror anthologies House of Mystery and House of Secrets respectively. Though Abel would be moved over to House of Mystery with Cain.After Crisis on Infinite Earths, Alan Moore would revive the characters in Saga of the Swamp Thing #33, which was a tribute to Swamp Thing’s first appearance in House of Secrets.They would also show up as supporting characters in House of Mystery when it was briefly revived as Elvira’s House of Mystery.
Great deepcut right here. I remember buying the back issues as a teen and they are somewhere in my parent’s attic right now.
And earlier, they appear in a weird Middle Eastern collection of fan fiction — in the first “book” of it, in fact. I wouldn’t recommend it personally, but fans of the collection get really obsessed with it. In fact, they invented the concept of canon and curated the current version of the collection to only carry stories that were canonical in their opinion.
Actually in Sandman they address this by leaving it ambiguous if they’re the Biblical Cain and Abel.
Lucien and Destiny were also hosts of D.C.’s horror anthologies before Gaiman repurposed them for Sandman. (As was Eve, who IIRC appears very briefly in Sandman.)
And The Mad Mod Witch was repurposed as “The Fashion Thing” that sometimes works as one of Dream’s servants.
Oh yes, that’s right. Man, DC really had a lot of EC-lite horror anthologies at one time, huh?
Cain also had a brief cameo in the most recent Justice League cartoon:
I tend to think of Sandman’s versions of people from the Bible or mythology as their own separate people from the originals (especially Cain with the whole horror host aspect), although it’s left at least one person confused. “Don’t you mean Cain from the Bible?”
Even before House of Mystery/House of Secrets they appeared in the Bible.
wooo. I dig it. casting synergy. Let’s hope they don’t wilfully destroy this property as well.
What do we think the story line is going to be? I’m assuming it’s going to be “Preludes and Nocturnes” if Roderick Burgess is involved.
It’s Preludes and Nocturnes and The Doll’s House for season 1.
Yes, they’ve said in the past that the first season would basically be the first book. But these things can change so who knows. Burgess isn’t in it at all past the very beginning, so I’m assuming that “main cast” here means “major characters plus the actors who are most famous” and that there may be some shuffling around which might bring in characters from later stories. I’d be surprised if we don’t at least get Death, Desire, and related stuff to help set up “A Doll’s House”.
Bare minimum it’ll be more dignified than Captain Phasma.
Who is going to play Death? And who is going to play Hob Gadling?
And seeing as they got this thing off the ground while Brian Blessed is still alive, he’s got to be Destruction, right?
He does seem like the ideal candidate, but he’s also like really old.
Please, please, please can we have Hannah Marks as Death?
Ah, I was hoping she’d be Desire and stick around longer. But I’m into it.
If anyone’s curious, this is in fact the same Lucifer who Tom Ellis is playing in the Fox/Netflix show. Also Peter Stormare in Constantine, but no one really cares about that.
TBH I care more about Constantine than I do the Fox Lucifer. Constantine at least has interesting character to it, rather than Lucifer’s sanitized police drama BS.
Lucifer the show definitely became a very good show even though it is far removed from its comic basis.
Lucifer the show has one of the most compelling cast of characters in a TV show. Why do you think it’s got such a big following?
How do you think that should change my personal feelings on it? It could be the biggest show on tv, I’ll still find it repulsive. Kudos to you if you enjoy it, I’d rather it have any minute amount of the energy that the comics have, especially at the sacrifice of the COP SOLVES CRIME procedural.
Just say you don’t like it, no need to mischaracterize it as a “sanitized police drama BS”, which is not even close to the truth. It’s one of the more serialized comic book shows out there, and one of its best qualities is in its strong character writing.Preference is one thing. Blatant ignorance is another. A rational person wouldn’t assume things they actually have no idea about when making snap judgment of something. That’s what’s repulsive.
I don’t like the show, and thus I think it’s perfectly fine to mischaracterize it as a “sanitized police drama BS”, because that’s what it is. It’s a fetid bastardization of the comic. It’s tedious upchuck of any police procedural that’s been on the tube for the last decade- and will be upchucked into the next shoddy, gimmicky police procedural for the next decade; I don’t think Lucifer will be really distinguishable from any of others.
Except it’s not “sanitized police drama BS”, which anyone actually watching the show could confirm. It’s like calling Netflix’s Daredevil a “campy comic show” or MCU’s Wandavision an “outdated sitcom”.The fact that the show Lucifer has nothing in common with the comics has nothing to do with it being mischaracterized as something it isn’t. And it does have way more interesting, well-written characters than the Constantine movie did.I mean, just admit you were talking shit without knowing anything about the show and move on. Otherwise, it’s a weird hill to die on.
Those are really garbage comparisons, I thought you’d say least try harder to defend this show with some adequate false equivalencies.ButI am sorry dude, this isn’t some hill I’m dying on, I just made some inane comment about the my preference for a stupid TV show and you had to rally defense for it. God forbid someone hates the show you like, in an era of the biggest glut of TV viewing options. Just go enjoy another episode of devil/cop whodunnit, will-they-or-won’t they and don’t work that some stranger doesn’t like it. You goddamn weirdo.
So you’re not mature enough to admit you were just being ignorant. Okay, at least you’re consistent.Hey, being a weirdo is way better than being an ignoramus. So I’ll take that, thank you.
Feel free to read into me as much as you want- you misunderstood your reason to start this crusade of yours, so it isn’t going to offend me if you don’t understand who you’re talking to.
Nah, it’s pretty clear what you did.
lol, evidently not to you, friend.
You seem like you can’t let this go. I hope that’s your conscience talking, since I can’t believe someone would be that ignorant and not feel the slightest amount of guilt over it.
Stomare was great in Constantine, although it’s kind of a different Lucifer. (Hellblazer uses The First Among the Fallen in a very similar role, because IIRC the timeline right Gaiman had already had him abdicate.)
More than just “kind of” different, I’d say. Hellblazer and Constantine have more traditional devil figures who are super gross and evil and are out to get your soul. Gaiman’s Lucifer is more just an “I’m the only rational person” type of asshole who has no goal of hurting people, he just doesn’t care if they get hurt and doesn’t think it’s his problem if the shitty dimension he presides over has become a permanent torture-fest staffed by sadistic demons. (Carey’s take on the character in the Lucifer comics is a little easier to like because he’s often up against worse people, but Carey still reminds you sometimes that it’s a real problem for a mega-powerful being to be a narcissist like Lucifer and that he’ll fuck you over big-time without thinking twice.) And over the course of Swamp Thing, which took the lead in making mythological & religious stuff more prominent in the DC universe, sometimes hell was traditional hell and sometimes it was explained away as sort of irrelevant (e.g. “a toxic Christian construct”). DC has made several half-hearted attempts to reconcile all these devils and hells and has redefined God a few times too; I’m out of touch now & don’t know if there’s a new party line.
I mean, in the books they’re the same, but Lucifer the show is almost completely untethered from them.
LUCIFER on Fox/Netflix turned The Prince of Hell into Richard Castle with Superpowers.Not that, as somebody who somehow managed to watch most of CASTLE, I ever had a problem with that – but yes, what the show turns into is far more interesting.
I recently listened to an audio presentation of the comics, which is why I’m so late to the game in realizing how incredibly emo those comics were. I’m curious whether they’ll lean into this and make a show by, for, and about tragically depressed teenagers wearing black jeans and overcoats, or whether they’ll give a different spin to the whole thing.One thing I am not looking forward to in the Netflix show: a graphic reproduction of Gaiman’s evident obsession with grotesque, lurid, deliberately shocking detail. Keep that shit off-screen.
I have recently finished a re-read of the entire Sandman series, and, yet, I have no idea what you mean by this: “One thing I am not looking forward to in the Netflix show: a graphic reproduction of Gaiman’s evident obsession with grotesque, lurid, deliberately shocking detail. Keep that shit off-screen”
a possible explanation: the post was written by Wanda’s aunt…
I’ve heard the Audible adaptation of the first book and I can see how it’d come across that way. They basically took everything that’s conveyed non-verbally in the comics, either in drawings or what’s implied, and turned it into narration. So for instance when Burgess’s ex-employee gets cursed to death, which looks a bit gross on the page but isn’t dwelt on, the narrator says “And then… HE EXPLODES!” And of course there’s the “24 Hours” story which… well, I like plenty of grim violent stuff but I still think that one was kind of overdone and icky, in a way that Gaiman didn’t indulge in so much later on.
It’s explicitly a horror series in the early going (as you apparently found out), but as it goes along it becomes more far-ranging in its preoccupations: history, fantasy, literature, mythology, sexuality, etc.
grotesque, lurid, deliberately shocking detailBut that’s both The Dreaming and dreaming in a nutshell. That Gaiman seems to be able to tap the vast types of weirdness in Sandman (and a lot of his other works) is a huge part of what makes it compelling, imo.
What’s the point of watching this then? Especially it gonna show in Netflix, the place where you can actually shows all those things without any pearl clutches and bible thumpers getting offended. Yet here you are.
oh this is still happening?
They’ve been filming for a while now
So far, I love the casting, I just want to see what the visuals will be. I’m also curious who they’re gonna cast for the remaining Endless…
This is genius casting
The most key casting decision: Who plays Mathew the Raven??I’m always down for Gilbert Godfrey.
Oh, that is some inspired casting.
Hey, let’s not, ya?I get Gaiman wants an adaptation, but I don’t.
It doesn’t look like Dream’s sister, Death, is in the show. Or the part has not been cast.
Cool, but when will they announce Emma Dumont as Death?
“David Goyer”Oh no.
Tom Sturridge is what Neil Gaiman wished he looked like in his thirties