Inside the Three-Year Secret of Netflix’s ‘Sandman’ Bonus Episode — and How Neil Gaiman Almost Spoiled the Surprise of Its A-List Cast
variety.comJennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “A Dream of a Thousand Cats”/”Calliope,” the surprise 11th episode of “The Sandman” Season 1.Netflix’s “The Sandman” was always meant to have 11 episodes in its first season — you just didn’t know it until the special final installment, a two-part animated and live-action story titled “A Dream of a Thousand Cats”/”Calliope,” dropped Friday.Or, if you’re a diehard fan who has been following every piece of “Sandman” news since the TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved graphic novels was first ordered to series in July 2019, you might have been slightly gaslit into not remembering that there were 11 episodes when the 10-episode season launched two weeks ago. “There may have been hints earlier.
We sold an 11-episode order way back when, and you’ll see that if you go back and look at some of the press,” “Sandman” showrunner Allan Heinberg, who developed the series alongside Gaiman and executive producer David Goyer, told Variety. “So I think we were a little bit like, ‘Have we let the cat out of the bag?’ before we even knew there were cats in the bag, but we did the best we could.”But there were a few times when Gaiman, as he put it, “let the cat out of the building” while making the Tom Sturridge-led show.“Once, I put the ‘Here Comes a Candle’ book cover up on Twitter,” Gaiman said, referring to a fictional book featured in his “Sandman” issue “Calliope.” “I replied to somebody about ‘A Dream of a Thousand Cats,’ and I said we started casting the cats already.
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