Speaking to MTV at last night's Spike TV’s Guys Choice Awards in Culver City, California , Joseph Gordon-Levitt touched briefly on his current developmental work on the adaptation of Neil Gaiman's epic Sandman series from Vertigo Comics. “It’s really good, man. 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.”
In comparison to other comic book movies, Levitt cautions that there won't be a lot of crimefighting or punching in the film. "Big spectacular action movies are generally about crime fighters fighting crime and blowing sh-t 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."
It sounds as if Sandman might be a long way off, though Levitt, David S. Goyer (Man of Steel), Jack Thorne (Skins) and Gaiman are refining the script. Warner Bros. was said to like the first draft of the script and Gaiman has previously gone on record to state that Sandman is not on WB's slate of DC Comics adaptations because the property will be part of a previously unannounced slate of Vertigo adaptations.
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