Boyd Holbrook has always felt like an actor that’s right on the cusp of breaking out in a major way and becoming a big star, but it hasn’t quite happened yet. After securing supporting roles in a number of smaller genre projects, he proved he could hold his own as a leading man in Netflix’s smash hit crime series Narcos.
From there, he showed up in Liam Neeson thrillers A Walk Among the Tombstones and Run All Night, lent support as the villainous Donald Pierce in Logan and tried his hand at being an action hero by taking top billing in Shane Black’s The Predator, but his next project is his most exciting yet.
The Sandman has finally escaped from decades in development hell, with the Neil Gaiman adaptation having been filming since last October. The majority of the principal cast was recently announced, with the notable exception of John Constantine, and Holbrook is signed on as Corinthian. In a recent interview, the 39 year-old outlined the audition process, while also teasing that plans are already being laid out for multiple seasons of the comic book show.
“I play The Corinthian, which is one of the coolest things that’s happened in a while to me. It’s like one of the best comic books that hasn’t been made. It was a long process, I read the script and they were really adamant about everyone auditioning. So I went in, it must have been like a year ago, probably, and then I didn’t hear anything until probably like September or something like that. Anyways it was a long process, and the conversation just started and they wanted to tape again and they wanted me to meet with Neil which I was really interested in doing and talking about just how the show was going to be done.
I think everyone wants the show to continue. I think it’s a standard contract that’s like seven, five years whatever. We have talked about all that. I don’t know if it’ll all work out. I think it might work out in different blocks of time, but yeah you definitely want to have some sort of macro idea of how long something’s gonna last. But I don’t wanna give away the details of how long.”
We’ve already seen Keanu Reeves and Matt Ryan play Constantine, while Tom Ellis has proven hugely popular as the leading man in Lucifer, but Gaiman and showrunner Allan Heinberg are wise to wipe the slate clean when it comes to Netflix’s The Sandman. After all, many filmmakers have tried and failed to get it off the ground in the past, with the sprawling mythology and complex themes much better suited to their own pocket of the universe than being forced to connect with pre-exisitng TV shows, just to make it easier for the marketing team to sell it to audiences.