SANDMAN gets full trailer and release date

Netflix's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman will hit screens on 5 August this year.

The trailer opens with Sandman/Morpheus/Dream (Tom Sturridge) intoning, "I am the King of Dreams, ruler of the Nightmare Realm." We then meet Johanna Constantine (Jenna Coleman), occult detective, as meets Mad Hettie and is told that the Sandman is coming. Johanna says he's a fairy story, but Hettie disagrees. Two police officers are then shown shooting open the Sandman's prison releasing him back into the world after more than a century of imprisonment.

Morpheus then returns to his realm, the Dreaming, where he meets his librarian Lucienne (Vivienne Acheampong), who warns him that the realm has gone to rot in his absence. We then briefly see a brace of characters: Death (Kirby  Howell-Baptiste), Desire (Mason Alexander Park), John Dee (David Thewlis) and The Corinthian (Boy Holbrook), who notes that "he's free, he's out of his cage." The trailer ends with Morpheus greeting a raven, who may or may not be Matthew (voiced by Patton Oswalt).

The show also stars Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer, Charles Dance as Roderick Burgess, Asim Chaudhry as Abel, Sanjeev Bhaskar as Cain, Donna Preston as Despair, Joely Richardson as Ethel Cripps, Kyo Ra as Rose Walker, Stephen Fry as Gilbert, Razane Jammal as Lyta Hall and Sandra James-Young as Unity Kincaid, with Mark Hamill as the voice of Merv Pumpkinhead.

Gaiman is co-writing the new adaptation and has also served as showrunner.