More From Joseph Gordon-Levitt On SANDMAN
The The Dark Knight Rises actor offers another update on the planned adaptation of Neil Gaiman's comic series: "If you examine [Sandman] from the broad strokes, there is sort of a beginning, middle and end, but it was written in such this episodic way. It’s not like adapting a graphic novel."
Joseph Gordon-Levitt Talks Sandman Script
Speaking to IGN to promote the second season of HitRecord TV, actor, writer, producer Joseph Gordon-Levitt touched on his progress on The Sandman script. [Earlier this week, Levitt also spoke to MTV about Sandman.] Once again, Levitt stressed the difficulty of picking a beginning, middle and end from the celebrated Neil Gaiman work that's spanned two decades.
"We’re working on it. Sandman is… I love it too, but it’s not an obvious adaptation. They’ve been trying. There’s been drafts of Sandman scripts. I was talking to Neil Gaiman about this and he said, ‘I’ve read so many Sandman scripts!’ For decades! For the last 20 years, there’s been different tries and the reason is Sandman is a series of comics."
Levitt goes on to discuss the property in such a way that almost sounds (I'm sure it's unintentional) as if Sandman would be better served as a TV series.
"Each issue is 24 pages and it’s written that way. As a serial, kind of more episodic thing. If you examine it from the broad strokes, there is sort of a beginning, middle and end, but it was written in such this episodic way. It’s not like adapting a graphic novel. Like Watchmen is a book. This isn’t that, so it really takes quite a bit of creativity and ingenuity to figure out, okay, how can we take all these kind of disparate episodes and make them congeal into a movie – a feature film that’s got a beginning, middle and end."
If Sandman is "episodic" in nature, why not just make it a TV series? As a TV series with 12-24 one-hour episodes per season, it would definitely be easier to stay closer to the source material. With a two-hour film, you're inevitably going to run out of time and be forced to omit certain storylines and characters which I believe is what Levitt is referring to as the difficult portion of the adaptation. In a film version of Sandman, would we still get the Corinthian? The visit to Hell? Daniel? Levitt's task of choosing what to leave on the cutting room floor is one I definitely don't envy.
Levitt is currently working on the script with David S. Goyer (Man of Steel), Jack Thorne (Skins) and Gaiman.
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