Neil Gaiman acknowledges he owes the success of The Sandman to George R.R. Martin, but not merely because the new Netflix series shares two key actors with HBO's Game of Thrones: Charles Dance and Gwendoline Christie. No, their history goes way back, to what Martin concedes was "not the greatest decision I made in my editing career."

In a video interview released by Netflix in conjunction with The Sandman's streaming premiere, Gaiman relates that the only reason the characters exist in their current form is because Martin rejected his pitch for the long-running Wild Cards sci-fi anthologies, more than three decades ago.

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"I explained to Gwendoline the other day, while we were walking around the car, I said, 'Of course, George has never let me forget that I owe Sandman to him,'" Gaiman said in the video, only for Martin to pick up the baton.

George RR Martin Rejected Neil Gaiman's Sandman Pitch

"It's not the greatest decision I made in my editing career," but when you pitched Sandman to me for my Wild Cards series, and I passed on it. And then you took it to DC, and here you are with [...] a television series, and all of those comics, and graphic novels, and awards, and all of that."

To be technical, it's two television series: Lucifer and, now, The Sandman, both based on characters created by Gaiman with his artistic collaborators Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg. But that may be adding insult to injury.

"I don't know," Martin continued, "maybe in some alternate world, or in some realm of Dream, I accepted it, and you, by now, published 10 stories of a Wild Cards character who lived in dreams."

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"I could have made $4,000 by now," Gaiman interjected, to which Martin replied, "Easy! Maybe even six!"

However, Martin's decision all of those years ago inadvertently led to the creation of what he calls one of the "greatest graphic novels, and/or comic book series, of all time."

Of course, Martin isn't alone in his assessment. The Sandman went on to win a World Fantasy Award, a Hugo Award and multiple Eisners, for starters. Its collected editions are perennial bestsellers.

Unfortunately, The Sandman's publishing success didn't ease its transition to the screen: A film adaptation was first planned in the 1990s, only to toil in development hell for years. Along the way, such names as Roger Avery, Terry Gilliam, David S. Goyer and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were attached, only for a cinematic version to go nowhere. But, finally, in 2019, Netflix struck a deal with Warner Bros. for The Sandman to be developed as a streaming series, developed by Allan Heinberg.

The Sandman Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.

Source: Tudum