The Sandman: Neil Gaiman Reveals Why He Sabotaged Movie Adaptation, Calls It "The Worst Script I've Ever Read"

Neil Gaiman's disinterest in previous attempts at adapting The Sandman into live-action is well documented, he's even brought it up multiple times while promoting the Netflix TV series (signaling his satisfaction with the show). Among the many versions that were attempted in the past included a feature film with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who would have starred and directed the project) and even a film from notorious producer Jon Peters. As some fans may recall, Peters was not only notoriously a larger than life figure but found his place in pop culture thanks in part to a story told by Kevin Smith wherein the Clerks filmmaker spoke about his eccentricities, and his desire for a giant mechanical spider to be put in the film.

Speaking in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Gaiman detailed the script that was written for a Sandman movie that had been spearheaded by Peters as its producer. The Coraline author revealed that while he didn't finish the script, it was a mess. "I heard about that later," Gaiman said about Peters' penchant for putting large robotic arachnids in his films. And people were like, 'Oh, you are kidding." And I'm like, 'No, it had a giant mechanical spider.' But much more important than that, Lucifer, Morpheus, and the Corinthian were identical triplets. They were a family of identical brothers, and it was all a race to see who could get the ruby, the helm, and the bag of sand before midnight on 1999, before the new millennium started, because whoever got it would be the winner. That was the plot."

Gaiman went on to note that he received a phone call from someone in Peters' office asking for his opinion on the script, where he told them: "There was nothing in there I loved. There was nothing in there I liked. It was the worst script that I've ever read by anybody." The author then revealed he sent the script to notorious film website Ain't It Cool News, who lambasted it online and essentially made the project go away

"He had one idea," Gaiman said of Peters and his Araneae obsession. "It transmuted. And he had three properties... They said to him, you can have any three properties you want. And he chose Superman, Wild Wild West, and Sandman. And when I asked, why has he chosen Sandman? They said, because he saw a statue of Morpheus and he thought it looked cool."

The Sandman's first season is now streaming on Netflix.