Like Watchmen, Sandman is considered to be one of those comic books which is impossible to bring to the big screen. However, as Zack Snyder eventually did with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is looking to helm a live-action adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved Sandman.
The Don Jon director is attached to produce and direct the movie from a pitch by Man of Steel writer David Goyer. Jack Thorne (A Long Way Down) was recently revealed to be working on the script, but in a recent interview, Levitt confirmed that they’re still very much in the early stages of developing the project.
“Right now we’re working on a script,” the actor and filmmaker revealed. “It’s me and Goyer and the screenwriter and Neil Gaiman, as well as the good folks at DC and Warner Bros. It’s a really cool team of people. It’s a lot of the same people who worked on the Nolan Batman movies. It’s really exciting.”
However, he would then go on to reveal that Sandman currently doesn’t have a script:
“There’s not a script yet, we’re still kind of working it out because it’s such a complicated adaptation because Sandman wasn’t written as novels. Sin City was written as a novel. Sandman is 75 episodic issues. There’s a reason people have been trying and failing to adapt Sandman for the past 20 years.”
Of course, it’s at this point that people start declaring, “It’s never going to get made!” but Levitt is clearly passionate about the project, and when pressed on whether he’ll be the one to finally adapt Sandman, he replied: “You know, we’re still in the middle of it, so I don’t want to make any claims, but I think we’ve got the right ideas.”
The movie has a very impressive team working on it (including Gaiman), so it’s hard to imagine that they won’t be able to come up with something that works. Levitt is also expected to star in Sandman.
