In July 2019, Netflix announced that they would be adapting the legendary The Sandman comic books by Neil Gaiman and Vertigo Comics into a TV series. It’s been quiet on that front for a year now, but Gaiman himself has given an update on the upcoming series.

Speaking with Digital Spy, Gaiman said that Netflix’s The Sandman was supposed to start shooting at the end of May 2020, but production was delayed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

However, he reassured that the series would still be going ahead as planned, and that it would be set in the year 2021, instead of 1986 like in the source material.

He said:

“We’re working with Netflix, we were meant to start shooting at the end of May.

Given this COVID world, everything is on pause.

The Netflix version is going to begin in 2021, so Morpheus will have been kept prisoner in the Netflix version for 105 years rather than 70 years.

We’ll take that one, see what that does.

It’s already in the scripts, it does interesting things because… if we were creating this character now, what gender would the character be?

If we were creating the character now, who would they be? What would they be doing?

And going on from there.”

Interestingly, Gaiman also points out that Netflix’s The Sandman protagonist Morpheus or Dream (Of The Endless) could deviate from comics’ traditionally male version. Now Dream could potentially be female, trans or even non-binary (which he probably should be considering that he’s an abstract entity).

Neil Gaiman will act as an executive producer for the Netflix series, joined by the likes of Allan Heinberg and David S. Goyer.

For those unfamiliar with the source material, The Sandman tells the tale of Morpheus/Dream, a powerful and near-immortal being who presided over the realm of Dreams as he attempted to correct mistakes he’d made over the course of his existence. Along the way, he meets other immortal beings and interesting figures.

In the meantime, head on over here to check out our list of the top ten best comics from the Vertigo Comics imprint.