Neil Gaiman’s Sandman has always been a tantalizingly tricky property when it comes to live-action adaptations. On the one hand, the goth culture icon is a great character with a fully realized world populated with awesome side characters, and a nice finite storyline. On the other hand, fully realizing that fully realized world is tough. Though the central story arc of Preludes and Nocturnes (the first collection of Sandman comics) could be stream-lined into a feature film without too much trouble, the coolest aspects of the character were yet to come. And the ever-changing nature of the series doesn’t really lend itself well to film sequels (Sandman himself is often barely in the stories). This has always made Sandman seem more appropriate as a television series. But trying to visually pull of the look of the comics on a TV budget is questionable. For these reasons there have been a lot of starts and stops on adaptations in the past 15 years.
Last year DC, HBO, and director James Mangold were working on a television series, though fans weren’t too thrilled with the fact that Mr. Gaiman had nothing to do with the project. Unshockingly, that fizzled. But then Warner Bros TV decided to take a stab, with Eric Kripke taking the helm (Kripke coolly quit his show-running duties on Supernatural after The CW refused to let the show walk into the sunset). This was an excellent match. But, again, unshockingly, yesterday The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood reported that things didn’t quite work out. Kripke said: “[The show] just didn’t quite happen this season through nobody’s fault, and hopefully we can do it again in the future.”
But wait… now Spinoff Online reports that DC Entertainment’s Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns has issued this Tweet: “Correction to world: The Sandman is AWAKE!” he tweeted this afternoon. “Psyched to be working with @neilhimself on developing one of the greatest series ever!”
Well? So which is it, dammit?! I want my Eric Kripke Sandman! Although, I want it on HBO. Or at least AMC.
4 comments
Call me when filming starts. Until then this is all bullshit.
Do we really need anymore goth-wank on our cinema/TV screens than there all ready is?
SANDMAN was awesome long before Emo-goths adopted its trappings in terrible ways. I’d love to see a decent TV series of it, but only if Gaiman was intimately involved.
Loved Sandman. Not interested in a TV series. Again, Dream is not in a lot of the stories. To be based upon the books, this becomes an anthology series by nature. A bit like (weirdly) the Friday the 13th series that had nothing to do with Jason. Moreover, where do they get the money for the sets/fx? You can’t really just Stargate this and have every exotic locale dumbed down to “why don’t we just make this planet look like rural Canada too?”
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