It’s been more than a year since we heard much about Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s planned adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic series. But while you might think the project has vanished into development hell like so many attempts before it, worry not: JGL is still working away on the idea.
“It’s really good, man. It’s slow but steady,” he told MTV. “It’s a really complicated adaptation because those comics, they’re brilliant. But they’re not written as a whole. It’s not like Watchmen, which is a graphic novel that has a beginning, middle, and end. Sandman was written over the course of whatever — I forget exactly, six or seven years. One at a time. One little 20-page issue at a time. And to try to take that and make it into something that’s a feature film — a movie that has a beginning, middle, and end — is complicated.”
Gordon-Levitt says he has a vision for how he wants the film to work, and he’s been busy collaborating with David Goyer, Warner Bros. and Gaiman himself. He also knows what he doesn’t want the final movie to be. “Big spectacular action movies are generally about crime fighters fighting crime and blowing shit up. This has nothing to do with that,” he explained. “And it was actually one of the things that Neil Gaiman said to me, he said, ‘Don’t have any punching.’ Because he never does. If you read the comics, Morpheus doesn’t punch anybody. That’s not what he does. It’s going to be like a grand spectacular action film, but that relies on none of those same old ordinary clichés. So, that’s why it’s taking a lot time to write, but it’s going to be really good.” So yes, no punchy-punchy, but hopefully lots of atmosphere.