Why is the Sandman Movie Taking So Long To Make?
Of the many comic book adaptations being made between DC, Marvel, and other companies, one of the more curious ones is Sandman, whose comic was written by the legendary Neil Gaiman. What’s also curious is that this movie has been in the works for a long, long, time. It even has actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt on it, and yet there’s been very little movement. Why is that? Chatting with IGN, he gave an answer as to why this series is difficult to adapt to the big screen.
“We’re working on it. Sandman is… I love it too, but it’s not an obvious adaptation. They’ve been trying. There’s been drafts of Sandman scripts. I was talking to Neil Gaiman about this and he said, ‘I’ve read so many Sandman scripts!’ For decades! For the last 20 years, there’s been different tries and the reason is Sandman is a series of comics.”
Gordon-Levitt elaborated, “Each issue is 24 pages and it’s written that way. As a serial, kind of more episodic thing. If you examine it from the broad strokes, there is sort of a beginning, middle and end, but it was written in such this episodic way. It’s not like adapting a graphic novel. Like Watchmen is a book. This isn’t that, so it really takes quite a bit of creativity and ingenuity to figure out, okay, how can we take all these kind of disparate episodes and make them congeal into a movie – a feature film that’s got a beginning, middle and end.”
Well it’s clear the team wants the Sandman movie to be something special, as well as close to the source material. When will it be done? We’ll have to wait and see.