During an interview with MTV at Spike TV’s Guys Choice Awards this past weekend, Joseph Gordon-Levitt offered an update on his planned big screen take on Neil Gaiman’s acclaimed DC/Vertigo comic book series The Sandman and the challenges of adapting the epic story.
“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.”
Asked how it will compare to other comic book movies, Gordon-Levitt added: “Big spectacular action movies are generally about crime fighters fighting crime and blowing shit 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 any punching.’ 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 is currently without a release date, and is being produced by Gordon-Levitt, Gaiman and David S. Goyer (Man of Steel), with Jack Thorne (How I Live Now) penning the script.