Sandman Producer Confident Film Will Go Into Production Next Year

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman has had several false starts as a movie adaptation in the past. Most recently, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been pushing to direct an adaptation of the beloved Vertigo Comics series, but the shifting of Vertigo properties from Warner Bros. to sister studio New Line Cinema have left some wondering if Levitt's adaptation still has a chance of entering production.

Producer David Goyer seems pretty confident that it does. He tells Collider that the move to New Line makes sense, that the project has a new writer on board, and that he still expects to enter production in 2016.

We're just about to do a new draft. All of the Vertigo properties ported over to New Line a few months ago. There was a decision from the higher-ups that New Line would focus on the Vertigo properties and Warner Bros would focus on the DC properties. So we're just starting a re-write with a really fantastic writer that fans of your site will enjoy that's coming aboard, but I can't quite announce it yet.

I think that the Vertigo properties are a bit more quirky and off-center than kind of the mainstream superhero stuff at Warners. But I understand the decision because we're not having to fight for release dates with the Vertigo stuff like we would have been having to do over at Warner Bros. But I feel confident that film will go into production hopefully next year.

The Sandman was a series that helped define Vertigo Comics. Told by Gaiman and a long list of comics' best artists of the era, the series followed Morpheus, the embodiment of Dream, as he navigated his place in the universe and his relationships, both to the mortal world and to his family of fellow conceptual personifications, the Endless.

It took Gaiman 75 issues to complete his serialized story. Some have argued that the story is un-filmable, but it seems Levitt and Goyer are determined to try.