Neil Gaiman says Netflix's The Sandman series will be set in the present day

Variety

Gaiman said at DC Fandome that he and his writers have taken the coronavirus hiatus to push a "pause button just to try and get the scripts as close to perfect as we possibly could, which has been really fun." He added that The Sandman will be set in the present day. “What we’re doing with Netflix is saying ‘OK It’s still going to start in 1916, but the thing that happens in Sandman 1, the point that the story starts is not 1988," he said. "It’s now. And how does that change the story? What does that give us? What does that make us have to look at that we wouldn’t have to look at if we were setting it as a period piece? What is that going to do to the gender of characters, what is that going to do to the nature of characters? What’s that going to do to the story? And that has been an absolute delight. Because it means we are always being true to the story and being true to the characters. But it gives us tremendous freedom to go, ‘OK if we were doing it now what would Sandman be?’ And that, again, is very liberating.”