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Neil Gaiman's Sandman - Now Netflix/WB co-production

Goose

By Goose,
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Festoon

Festoon

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Bazjam said:

I think this could be hugely damaging to Netflix if they don’t renew. They’ve had so much bad PR recently when it comes to cancelling shows, that if they did it to a beloved IP like this, and one that’s performed well both critically and in the worldwide charts, it could be the final straw for many when it comes to a Netflix subscription. I mean really, what would be the point in getting into any new shows they make.

 

It's purely financial for them, if the numbers don't work qccording to their formula, they don't renew.

 

If they can use the cash to fund 100 christmas movies, mills & boonesque sauce, and a few dodgy dating shows and get more viewers, then they will.

 

Controversy is good advertising, not a problem.

 

Now, it's still No. 3 in the Top 10 globally so it does have a chance - I thought it had fallen further.

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footle

footle

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7 hours ago, odb said:

 

More budget I feel than politics, the average viewer wouldn't know that certain characters were race/gender swapped unless they read the comics. And there's more people who don't know that Sandman is this acclaimed series than do. Outside the internet geek sphere echo chamber, hardly anyone talks or knows about it. The drop out rate must be significant for them in hesitation to renew and I can't blame them if so.


i meant corporate politics - if you’re Netflix do you just let Warner bros implode?

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Bazjam

Bazjam

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19 hours ago, Festoon said:

 

It's purely financial for them, if the numbers don't work qccording to their formula, they don't renew.

 

If they can use the cash to fund 100 christmas movies, mills & boonesque sauce, and a few dodgy dating shows and get more viewers, then they will.

 

Controversy is good advertising, not a problem.

 

Now, it's still No. 3 in the Top 10 globally so it does have a chance - I thought it had fallen further.

I agree it's largely financial but I do think other factors come into it as well. They love there prestige titles. Look how desperate they are to win an Oscars. Happy to throw millions at the passion projects of name directors to try and do so.

 

Interestingly, Gaiman recently said that they built a clause into the Netflix contract allowing them to take it to other studios if Netflix decided to cancel. Could be great PR for someone like Amazon or Disney to pick it up if Netflix cancel and face a big backlash from fans.

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Festoon

Festoon

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50 minutes ago, Bazjam said:

I agree it's largely financial but I do think other factors come into it as well. They love there prestige titles. Look has desperate they are to win Oscars. Happy to throw millions at the passion projects of name directors to try and do so.

 

Interestingly, Gaiman recently said that they built a clause into the Netflix contract allowing them to take it to other studios if Netflix decided to cancel. Could be great PR for someone like Amazon or Disney to pick it up if Netflix cancel and face a big backlash from fans.

 

The second thing is a large concession by Netflix. I imagine they were concerned about the HBO Dragons and Prime LoTR at the time and felt they needed a prestige fantasy show.

 

The still killed The OA though.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Anne Summers

Anne Summers

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Now I've watched this all the way through and let it sink in for a while, I have mixed feelings. 

While I enjoyed it, I didn't feel compelled to binge watch it, meaning that perhaps it wasn't as compelling as something like Rings of Power or Cobra Kai, which are shows I have binged recently. 

 

I can't help wondering how much of the enjoyment, in this case, is just coming from getting excited about seeing how elements and situations from the comic have been adapted. And if I wasn't such a big fan of the comic, would I be that impressed? Or would it seem a bit disjointed and style-over-substance, as is the case with some other comic-to-streaming-service adaptions (Locke and Key and Umbrella Academy being two examples) I've seen recently.

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Garwoofoo

Garwoofoo

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44 minutes ago, Anne Summers said:

I can't help wondering how much of the enjoyment, in this case, is just coming from getting excited about seeing how elements and situations from the comic have been adapted. And if I wasn't such a big fan of the comic, would I be that impressed? Or would it seem a bit disjointed and style-over-substance, as is the case with some other comic-to-streaming-service adaptions (Locke and Key and Umbrella Academy being two examples) I've seen recently.

 

My other half and I are about halfway through this at the moment, neither of knew anything about the comic before we started, and we're both loving it.

 

Yes it's a little disjointed but only in that it feels like an anthology of several different stories, all of which happen to feature a stroppy Goth. No problem with that and not knowing what you're going to get when you go into each episode is part of the appeal.

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Anne Summers

Anne Summers

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35 minutes ago, Garwoofoo said:

 

 

Yes it's a little disjointed but only in that it feels like an anthology of several different stories, all of which happen to feature a stroppy Goth. No problem with that and not knowing what you're going to get when you go into each episode is part of the appeal.

Yeah, that's kind of how I imagined it would seem if I hadn't read the comics. To be fair it's kind of how the comics themselves feel when you first read them - although there is an overarching plotline running through them, it's easy to lose it among all the side stories and detours! In a comic it works fine, but I wasn't sure how it would feel in a TV series, particularly a modern-day streaming series where there are certain expectations about how episodes will stand alone as well as flow together.

Glad to hear you're enjoying it, so maybe my fears are misplaced. 

 

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K

K

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Posted

I finally finished watching this, and thought it was fantastic - about as good an adaptation of the comic as you could reasonable expect. They changed it where it needed to be changed, but generally stuck closely to the original. A little bit too closely in places - it replicates some of the more annoying elements of the comic too, like Rose's wacky housemates who were pretty insufferable. But for the most, I thought it was as good if not better than the original comic - I went back and re-read some bits of it after each episode, and I thought the storytelling was generally improved. They got rid of most of the awkward crossovers with other DC comics, like the Justice League getting involved, and smoothed out some of the cruder bits. They made better use of the Corinthian than the comic did, and the final confrontation between Dream and Corinthian was a massive improvement on their showdown in the comics.

 

There were a couple of bits I wasn't keen on - 24hrs dragged a bit, and the almost perfect adaptation of Men of Good Fortune was thrown off a bit by the changes to the timeline. They kept the same start date as the comic, but just had Dream stay imprisoned for an extra thirty years. For the most part, that didn't make any difference other than making some characters implausibly old, but it did spoil the symmetry of the ending where Dream and Hob meet up.

 

The only other thing I didn't like was Johanna Constantine. It's irrational, and I loved all the other changes to the casting, but I just can't accept Jenna Coleman as Constantine. She's just too well-groomed and stylish, and I'm just too attached to the original character. It's a shame, because it's my problem and no-one else's - my partner (who's never read Hellblazer or The Sandman*) thought Coleman was brilliant, and the Newcastle intro was really well done. I loved Constantine turning up in a Sierra Cosworth, but the new version of him just didn't feel right to me.

 

But apart from that, this was spectacular. The casting was absolutely incredible - the guy who played Morpheus was utterly perfect, as was the guy who played the Corinthian, Gwendoline Christie, Nimrod, pretty much everyone really. If anything, the first couple of story arcs in Sandman are the weakest, so any second series they make should be even better.

 

*she had a look at the first volume of the comic after watching the series, and her response was "the art is a bit... interesting" and put it straight back on the shelf, never to be re-opened.

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Exidor

Exidor

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21 minutes ago, K said:

The only other thing I didn't like was Johanna Constantine. It's irrational, and I loved all the other changes to the casting, but I just can't accept Jenna Coleman as Constantine. She's just too well-groomed and stylish, and I'm just too attached to the original character. It's a shame, because it's my problem and no-one else's - my partner (who's never read Hellblazer or The Sandman*) thought Coleman was brilliant, and the Newcastle intro was really well done. I loved Constantine turning up in a Sierra Cosworth, but the new version of him just didn't feel right to me.

 

I kind of felt the same but rationalised it as them replacing John with Johanna rather than just casting Coleman as a gender-swapped John. And the resolution of that bit of the story was done way better in the show than in the comics.

 

Spoiler

Changing it from "Druggies, eh?  Can't help themselves can they?" to it all being down to Constantine being a massive fuckup and making some terrible choices is much more fitting.

 

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Professor Puzzles

Professor Puzzles

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https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1587961504455831552?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1587961504455831552|twgr^ada8c72f98e0f28d4ae96d729dbc444f22c3b6e5|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps3A2F2Ftwitter.com2Fneilhimself2Fstatus2F1587961504455831552widget%3DTweet

 

Ah I don't know what I'm fucking doing. Basically Neil Gaiman says the series has been renewed so hurray!

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