Joseph Gordon-Levitt Leaves Sandman, But Maybe It's For The Best

Perhaps it's time to hang up the hat on this one.
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J.H. Williams III/DC Entertainment

There has never been a better time in Hollywood to attempt an ambitious, risky comic book movie. D-list superheroes like The Guardians of the Galaxy have carried blockbusters, Deadpool dominated the box office despite its R rating, and any notion of what should be off-limits in a superhero flick has been demolished. Yet some comic book movies struggle. Enter DC Entertainment's The Sandman.

Even if you've never heard of The Sandman, you've probably heard of the guy who most recently tried turning it into a movie: Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's been over two years since Gordon-Levitt announced he would develop a Sandman adaptation with David S. Goyer, the Batman Begins writer, and Neil Gaiman, the creator of Sandman — whose involvement as an executive producer made fans hopeful that a film might finally happen after being trapped in development hell for years.

Over the weekend, however, that fell apart. Levitt announced via his Facebook page that he would be exiting the project due to creative differences. His statement followed news that New Line Cinema would manage projects under Vertigo, DC's mature-readers-only imprint, which includes Sandman, rather than Warner Bros. proper — the studio that produced the Batman and Superman films. Presumably these new bosses had different ideas for how Sandman should look and feel. For instance, on March 4, the day before Gordon-Levitt announced his decision to quit, the studio said it had hired Eric Heisserer for the Sandman project, a screenwriter known for horror remakes including A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Thing, and Final Destination 5. Previously Goyer and Gaiman had been working with screenwriter Jack Thorne, a British TV writer and playwright involved with a forthcoming Harry Potter play.


While we don't know all the details about the goings-on between Gordon-Levitt and the studio, here's something we do know: Turning a franchise like Sandman into a movie would be frustrating, if not downright impossible. Originally a comic book series that ran from 1989 to 1996, The Sandman followed the titular Master of Dreams across a saga that was part horror story, part tragedy, and part celebration of myth and fable. Like a lot of dreams, Sandman never really hewed to a traditional narrative structure, instead flowing freely from one narrative thread to another in a sometimes strange, sometimes beautiful comic book tapestry. While the overarching story follows Dream himself as he goes about regaining his power and restoring order to the dream world following a long imprisonment, the series often wandered and digressed, becoming preoccupied with the stories of those whose lives intersected with the dream world in fascinating and fraught ways. It's the sort of thing that, as director Matthew Vaughn noted in 2007, might be feasible in an episodic HBO series, but exceedingly difficult in a two-and-a-half-hour movie.

(Ironically, a TV show was in development from Supernatural creator Eric Kripke in 2010, but it was abandoned)

There's also the challenge of how to render Sandman on-screen. The original comics feature a who's who of talented artists of the era, and all of the series' art—from the goth-punk horror stylings of Sam Keith and Mike Dringenberg, to the lush linework of Michael Zulli, or the quirky fun of Jill Thompson—worked together to weave a story that frequently and easily slipped from reality to dreams and nightmares, blending the two in sometimes lovely and sometimes odd ways that really can only be rendered on a comic book page. It's a story that's as likely to have Shakespeare brushing up against faerie as it is to spend a whole issue on the inner lives of cats.

The Sandman is simply a hard story, perhaps even an unfilmable one. Of course, that's the same thing that was said about Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, a graphic novel that nonetheless was able to make the jump to film in a slavishly faithful manner, albeit a (paradoxically) poorly-received one.

As for Sandman creator Neil Gaiman—the author remained understandably diplomatic, tweeting reminders to fans that he doesn't own Sandman, DC does, and therefore has no say in what happens to any film adaptation. While he had nothing but kind words for Gordon-Levitt, he didn't say what his own involvement would be in the future.

The drama brings to mind one of the most famous stories in The Sandman called "Season of Mists." In it, Lucifer, seeking revenge on Dream for an affront to his pride, decides to get back at him in a circuitous way. Rather than attack him, he simply quits and gives Dream the key to Hell, figuring that simply having to sort out what to do with the place would be more than enough to overwhelm him.

It's a pretty good metaphor for anyone trying to get a Sandman movie made.