Joseph Gordon-Levitt Talks Complicated Adaptation of Sandman. It was announced back in December 2013 that Neil Gaiman’s comic book series Sandman was being adapted into a film by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It’s easier said than done for the actor to adapt the comic for the big screen.
MTV chatted with Joseph regarding the status of the film, where the actor explained the reason for the slow pace in bringing the right script, which is being written by Jack Thorne.
It’s really good, man. It’s slow but steady. 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. I’m feeling really good about it, but it is a process, so please be patient.
With such a big story, Joseph also talked how the movie would be different from any other DC film adaptation out there and why you won’t be seeing a lot of fighting in the movie.
Big spectacular action movies are generally about crime fighters fighting crime and blowing sh-t up. This has nothing to do with that and it was actually one of the things that Neil Gaiman said to me, he said ‘Don’t have him punch anybody.’ 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 cliches. So, that’s why it’s taking a lot time to write, but it’s going to be really good.
Sandman, which was launched in 1989 under DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint, ran for 75 issues. The comic books were considered an episodic anthology series, focusing on the figurative character of Dream and his siblings known as the Endless.
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