On June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson passed away, one of the most acclaimed and talented artists that the music scene has seen throughout its history and who, during his half century of life, not only limited himself to revolutionizing the music industry entertainment, but to try, almost always with success, other artistic facets. and the one of the interpretation was one of the most experienced throughout his entire career.
What is MJ doing in The Sandman?
First of all, it must be said that The Sandmanwhich has become a mass phenomenon thanks to the premiere of the original series on Netflix this summer, It is a comic that began to be published in 1989 thanks to the work of Neil Gaiman and that at the time caught the attention of production companies to serve as the basis for movies or series. And remember that a quarter of a century ago, streaming platforms were still a pipe dream.
Well, 25 years ago, Warner Bros had the idea of taking the comics from The Sandman Y turn them into a tv series and one of the names that came up to participate in it was that of Michael Jackson, the singer, composer and choreographer who in those 90s swept the sales charts with extraordinarily influential albums such as Dangerous either history.
This is what Neil Gaiman himself has confessed in a statement made to a podcast, Happy Sad Confused, in which he comes to remember that “in 1996 they took me to Warner, where the then president […] sat me down and He told me that Michael Jackson had called him the day before. and asked him if he could play Morpheus in The Sandman. […] So there was a lot of interest in this, and they knew it was one of the crown jewels. And what did I think? I was like, Ooh!”
Although that project never came to fruition, the author of The Sandman He has confessed that this was not the last time he heard from Warner that they intended to cover his work. A movie was also on the table although it never materialized due to the sabotage of the author himself, who acknowledged having gone to the production company’s offices and imploring them “please, don’t make Sandman» (was the project they had in mind that bad?).
And who is Morpheus?
Also known as Dream, It is the protagonist of The Sandman and central axis of the comics plot that Neil Gaiman made at the end of the 80s and until 1993. According to that lore, Morpheus is one of the Seven Eternalspersonalities that embody different aspects of life and that are incredibly powerful and ancient, even much more than the very gods that humans worship.
For the Netflix series, the person in charge of giving life to that same character has been Tom Sturridge, a British actor, born in Londonand who has already participated in films such as Away from the madding crowd, In the path, covert radio, waiting forever and television fictions such as Irma Vep Y sweetbitter.
