Dream is surrounded by a team of strange supporting characters and, while we're interested to see the movie's take on ever murdering Cain and Abel, jaded janitor Merv Pumpkinhead, and Matthew the raven, it is the librarian of the Dreaming, custodian of all the books that never were, that is probably the most significant character to see Dream interact with at home. Lucien has a typical librarian-ish appearance, skinny, wiry, dressed in glasses and a bow tie and his hair always in a mess. It is hard not to picture Bill Nighy like that. Wise, loyal, a little bit sardonic, but always essentially likeable and trustworthy, Nighy brings a lot of classic qualities from many previous roles that would be ideal for Lucien. With anything from Pirates of the Caribbean to Underworld demonstrating Nighy's ability to work in large scale fantasies with huge amounts of CGI and performance capture elements, he should be at home amongst the largely artificial world that is likely to make up the Dreaming. Other options: Hugh Laurie might work well as the long limbed librarian now that he is back doing bigger film work. Anthony Head, the classic TV mystical librarian, might be a little too obvious. Given the part is slightly Dream's Alfred, Michael Caine has worked with the production team before in a similar part.
