THE SANDMAN universe just expanded: a surprise two-part bonus episode —featuring memorable comic issues “A Dream of a Thousand Cats” and “Calliope” — is now streaming on Netflix.
The two-part bonus features both an animated story with guest voices including Sandra Oh, James McAvoy, and David Tennant, plus a live-action story.
The first section is called A Dream of A Thousand Cats – it is animated, and adapts the storyline from the comic of the same name. Alongside Oh, Tennant, and McAvoy (who previously voiced Dream in an audiobook adaptation of The Sandman) the voice cast includes Rosie Day, David Gyasi, Joe Lycett, Michael Sheen, Nonso Anozie, Diane Morgan, Tom Wu, and Neil Gaiman himself.
Sheen and Tennant also star in another Gaiman book-to-TV adaptation, Amazon Prime Video’s Good Omens.
Gaiman posted: “Episode 11 was written by Caroline Smyth-Mcmullen. I met her first at a convention in 1998 in Tasmania.”
Speaking about the episode, director Hisko Hulsing (Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck) said: “We endeavored to make the animated version of A Dream Of A Thousand Cats as mesmerizing and hypnotic as we could by utilizing the magic of real oil paintings on canvas.”
The second part, Calliope, is done in live-action and stars Melissanthi Mahut (the voice of Kassandra in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey) as the title-named ancient Muse.
The Sandman premiered on August 5 on Netflix with a 10-episode first season (not including today’s surprise 11th). According to Netflix, the live-action adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s long-running, critically-acclaimed comic book series has been the number one TV show on Netflix for two weeks in a row, with two hundred million hours viewed.
Based on the classic series of comic books that launched Neil Gaiman, The Sandman stars Tom Sturridge as Morpheus/Dream, the personification of dreams and nightmares who sets out to restore order to his realm after being locked away by a spell for over 100 years.
Asked how many seasons they’ve got planned, showrunner Allan Heinberg said: “We’ve got as many as they’ll let us have. If enough viewers show up, we can go for quite a long while. We want to do all of it, we want a spin-off miniseries. We’d love to make it for as long as they’ll have us.” The Sandman hasn’t been renewed yet, possibly because it is very expensive to make.
Probably the best way to keep it streaming it to tell friends to watch it too.
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David Raiklen wrote, directed and scored his first film at age 9. He began studying keyboard and composing at age 5. He attended, then taught at UCLA, USC and CalArts. Among his teachers are John Williams and Mel Powel.
He has worked for Fox, Disney and Sprint. David has received numerous awards for his work, including the 2004 American Music Center Award. Dr. Raiklen has composed music and sound design for theater (Death and the Maiden), dance (Russian Ballet), television (Sing Me a Story), cell phone (Spacey Movie), museums (Museum of Tolerance), concert (Violin Sonata ), and film (Appalachian Trail).
His compositions have been performed at the Hollywood Bowl and the first Disney Hall. David Raiken is also host of a successful radio program, Classical Fan Club.
