People have been trying to adapt Neil Gaiman‘s The Sandman comics into a film or TV series for years now. After many false starts, Netflix is hoping to succeed where others have failed, and Gaiman has offered an update. According to the author, the series was about to go into production before everything had to shut down due to the coronavirus. But once things start getting back to normal, the series will be ready to go.

Last summer, word of the Netflix Sandman series broke, but we haven’t heard much about it since then. Thankfully, Neil Gaiman has provided an update via his Tumblr page, confirming that the show is almost ready to go – as soon as this coronavirus problem goes away, that is:

It’s going really well, except it’s kind of hibernating right now until people start making TV again. The scripts for the first season are written, casting had started, directors hired, sets were being built. Everything was ready to go into production, and then we moved into a pause. As soon as the world is ready to make TV drama, Sandman will move smoothly back into being made. In the meantime, we are taking the opportunity to get the scripts as good as we can.

As previously reported, Allen Heinberg is writing and serving as showrunner while Gaiman is executive producing with David Goyer. A potential film adaptation of the comic, which was first published in 1989, started knocking around in the 1990s. Names like Roger Avery, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, Eric Heisserer, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were all attached to the project in one form or another over the years, but nothing ever materialized.

On the TV front, James Mangold once pitched HBO on an adaptation, and later, Supernatural creator Eric Kripke was tasked with adapting the comic to TV. But these takes on the material never got off the ground, either. But based on Gaiman’s comment above, it sounds like Netflix has gotten closer than anyone ever before, and will likely finally make the show a reality once things start getting back to normal.

The Sandman follows “Dream, also known as Morpheus and other names, who is one of the seven Endless. The other Endless are Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium (formerly Delight), and Destruction (also known as ‘The Prodigal’). The series is famous for Gaiman’s trademark use of anthropomorphic personification of various metaphysical entities, while also blending mythology and history in its horror setting within the DC Universe. The Sandman is a story about stories and how Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, is captured and subsequently learns that sometimes change is inevitable.”