All the times Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman was almost a movie before Netflix

If you’ve ever thought, Patton Oswalt would make a great voice for a talking raven. Netflix’s The SandmanAnswer your questions with the help of this website. It is up to the individual to decide if the answer is positive or negative. However SandmanIn a blog posting, Neil Gaiman stated that Oswalt was their first choice for the comic book adaptation. He was also very deliberate in his selection.

“The question was, could we find an actor who could make you care about a dead person who was now a bird in the Dreaming – one who isn’t certain what’s going on, or whether any of this is a good idea? Could we also find the right voice actor to do this? SandmanA fan that used to wait in line just to obtain his Sandman comics signed?” Gaiman wrote. “The answer was, we could if we asked Patton Oswalt (he/him). Patton, who was also the first to be contacted, was the person that we cast the pitch the day prior. The Sandman to Netflix.”

If this seems like he’s overthinking it, just know (if you don’t already): This development is a helluva long time coming. Gaiman, like Dream of the Endless who is required to spend years trying to rebuild their realms, has now reached the end of his 30-year journey. The SandmanFrom comics to the screen. Over those decades, that screen has been big and silver and small and serialized, but it’s always been just a bit elusive.

We now know that Netflix was going to win, giving the story a proper serialized home, with a large budget, and an endless cast. Now, in addition to the first comic’s chapters, we can also look at the chapter of Sandman’s attempted development, and the alternate realities we might’ve seen had Sandmanbe optioned earlier.

1990s: Working towards a Sandman film

Image: Neil Gaiman, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III/DC Comics

Gaiman recounts that the first time he met about anything was in a meeting. SandmanIn 1990, the movie came to be. At Warner Bros., he attended a meeting where executives asked what he desired to see. Sandman movie. “‘Please don’t do it,’” Gaiman remembered of the meeting at a press roundtable in 2020. “I remember the Warner’s exec, Lisa Henson, looking at me very puzzled and saying, ‘Nobody’s ever come into my office and asked me not to make a movie before.’ And I said, ‘Well, I am. Please don’t. I’m working on the comic, and a movie would just be a distraction and a confusion. Just let me do my thing.’ And bless everybody, they kind of let me get on with it.”

Warner Bros. tried to adapt the story for the next decade, but it was not successful. Pulp FictionQuentin Tarantino and directed Silent Hill BeowulfTo direct, he was chosen by ). Ted Elliott (a team behind) wrote the script. Terry Rossio was also involved. Aladdin: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl And Shrek, among other gems); the story merged “The Doll’s House” and “Preludes and Nocturnes” storylines, and was going to be partially animated. Avary was fired but continued to work with Gaiman. Beowulf.

Some years later, scripts and creative staff changes have occurred. SandmanHollywood kept ignoring adaptations. At least one script was described by Gaiman as “not only the worst Sandman script I’ve ever seen, but quite easily the worst script I’ve ever read.” (While some sources from the time attribute this quote to Gaiman talking about the Elliott/Rossio script, others seem to think this was a later version of Warner Bros. plans.)

The 2000s: Who is the Sandman in this story?

Image: Si Spurrier, Bilquis Evely/DC Comics

It was a sad end to the millennium. Sandman, Gaiman spoke at 2007’s Comic-Con about how he wasn’t compromising his vision just for the opportunity to see SandmanOn the big screen. During a Q&A, Mania Entertainment quoted Gaiman as saying:

I’d rather see no ‘Sandman’ movie made than a bad ‘Sandman’ movie. But I feel like the time for a ‘Sandman’ movie is coming soon. We need someone who has the same obsession with the source material as Peter Jackson had with ‘Lord of the Rings’ or Sam Raimi had with ‘Spider-Man’.

To remind you just how much has changed between then and now, I’ll also note that Gaiman went on to talk about how Zack Snyder was “doing Watchmen at the moment, and he knows what he’s doing and I hope it’s good.” That same year, Gaiman would also be quoted as saying that Terry Gilliam would be his ideal choice for adapting the comic, but that (at the time) Gaiman was busy trying to get $70 million so he could adapt Good Omens.

When one fan at Comic-Con said that, given the opportunity, he’d make the movie himself, Gaiman responded: “That’s what I mean. I’m growing vats of people like you all around the world. Eventually we’ll put a bunch of you in a room with knives, and whoever emerges alive will be the winner and can make the Sandman movie.”

2010s: Kripke and Mangold are gone, but Goyer is back and Netflix will be there.

Image by Netflix

Warner Bros. never lost its way, even though Neil Gaiman had given up. Supernatural showrunner Eric Kripke was attached to a Warner Bros. Television version in 2010 that never came to fruition (and Gaiman wasn’t happy with it). LoganJames Mangold, director pitched an idea to HBO. But it didn’t work.

Even though the adaptation was a disaster in design hell for over a decade, it finally came together. Sandman continued to get shouted out by executives — or at least one executive, in a 2013 Hollywood Reporter interview. When asked what DC titles she wanted to see on screen, then-DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson said, “SandmanIt is simply the best. I think it could be as rich as the Harry Potter universe.”

She spoke the words into motion. In December 2013, it was motion. And Gaiman, true to his word, enlisted his faithful fans. Gaiman said he’d be working with David S. Goyer, the Blade and Dark Knight trilogys. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Looper, Third Rock From the SunTo bring the comic’s story to life in a film, they hired Jack Thorne. Jack Thorne was hired (creator of Shameless, Skins, And Harry Potter and Cursed ChildTo write the screenplay, kindly contact.

This was the first version. Gaiman was there when the script was being written. Goyer told Deadline in December 2014 that it was “a draft Warners is very happy with and we’re moving forward, knock on wood.” Moving forward with Gordon-Levitt as a producer, star, and director of the project, Goyer anticipated the script going out to actors in 2015.

At this point, Vertigo’s ownership was transferred from Warner Bros. To New Line. This subsidiary is not an independent entity. JGL was forced to leave the project after the C-suite changes. “A few months ago, I came to realize that the folks at New Line and I just don’t see eye to eye on what makes Sandman special, and what a film adaptation could/should be,” Gordon-Levitt wrote on his Facebook page in March 2016. “So unfortunately, I decided to remove myself from the project. I wish nothing but the best for the team moving forward.”

In the end, Goyer and Gaiman stayed with the project. They also lost Eric Heisserer, their screenwriter in the following years.Arrival, Shadow and Bone), who told iO9 that he quit the film project because he felt the property belonged on TV:

Neil was a great guy to talk with. [Gaiman]This was the reason I spent a lot time working on the feature. The structure of the feature film really doesn’t mesh with this. So I went back and said here’s the work that I’ve done. This isn’t where it should be. Television is the place to put it. Then I convinced myself to quit my job.

So the series was finally able to make its way to Netflix. However Sandman as a TV show was shopped around to multiple TV outlets — including HBO — Netflix was the one who made the big play, having recently lost its deal with Marvel. The streaming company signed what Hollywood Reporter described as a “massive” deal to scoop up SandmanIt was reportedly the most expensive television series DC Entertainment has ever made.

Gaiman remains publicly positive about this project, despite being 30 years old. He’s said he’ll be more involved with The SandmanHe was more impressed by the Starz version of American Gods, but less so than Amazon Prime Video’s Good OmensSeries (which he adapts all). He, Goyer and Allan Heinberg are the executive producers.

While this’ll obviously be the first SandmanGaiman is hopeful that the TV or film adaptation will see daylight, and that it has the potential to grow beyond a single season. MovieWeb quotes Gaiman speaking at a press conference.

Writers are people. The Sandman movie scripts and they go, ‘But it’s an R-rated movie, and we can’t have $100 million R-rated movie.’ So, that wouldn’t happen. To get to a world that long form storytelling is an advantage, not a problem, you had to do some research. The fact that there are five of these issues is a good thing. SandmanIt’s essentially 13 books of content, which is really a good thing. It’s not a drawback. It’s on our side. And the fact that we’re in a world in which we can take things that only existed in comic book art, and that can now exist in reality.