Neil Gaiman Comments on Probability of ‘Sandman’ Movie Happening

Will fans of The Sandman ever get to see the Endless on the big screen? Creator Neil Gaiman has little input in the matter, but he does have an optimistic outlook.

Gaiman attended SXSW in Austin, Texas to host a special event for his upcoming Amazon streaming series Good Omens. During the question and answer session, a fan asked Gaiman about the probability of seeing The Sandman or some other movie about the Endless in the future.

“The Endless are owned by DC Comics/Time Warner and not by me,” Gaiman explained. “[Good Omens] getting made, Terry [Pratchett] and I owned it, so we could control where it went. I think as the days go on, as the years go on, the probability that a Sandman thing will happen, obviously, increase continually. But I have no say in anything”.

You can check out a video of Gaiman discussing it, captured by The Verge’s Tasha Robinson, above.

Gaiman wrote The Sandman, which began publication in 1989. It predates DC’s Vertigo Comics imprint but is credited with inspiring the imprint’s creation. It’s been one of the jewels in Vertigo Comics’ crown since the series move to the imprint.

The series focuses on Morpheus, aka Dream of the Endless. Dream is one of seven siblings representing the major forces of the universe, the others being Destiny, Death, Destruction, Despair, Desire, and Delirium. After decades spent in captivity, Dream reemerges to find his kingdom, the plane known as the Dreaming, in ruins. He must rebuild and in doing so reexamine his role in the universe.

Warner Bros. has been trying to adapt The Sandman since the late 1990s but has struggled to make any progress. David S. Goyer and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were involved with the most recent attempt to turn the series into a movie, announced in 2013. Gordon-Levitt dropped out of the project in 2016, when Eric Heisserer was brought on to rewrite the script. Heisserer left the project as well after turning in his draft of the script. There’s been little news on the project since then.

As Good Omens panel moderator Aisha Tyler notes in the above video, streaming services present a new opportunity for The Sandman. Some, including Heisserer, have wondered if The Sandman would be better served as a television series on a prestige network like HBO. If HBO finds success with its upcoming Watchmen series, perhaps they may look further into DC Comics’ library of adult-oriented content, like The Sandman, for more ideas. James Mangold pitched such an adaptation to HBO in 2010, but was turned down. Supernatural creator Eric Kripke tried his hand at it in 2011, but the project did not move forward.

Do you have hope for a Sandman movie? Let us know in the comments.

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