It’s one of Gaiman’s many stories about his troubled relationship with Hollywood, and more specifically The Sandman’s perilous journey through 33 years of development hell. It’s a journey, however, that has finally come to an end — thanks to a new 10-part TV series streaming on Netflix. “Sandman needs time,” says Gaiman, who was personally involved in the show’s development. “If anyone had ever tried to make a Game of Thrones movie, it wouldn’t have worked either. You need space for a big story. You need time to care about the characters. In the season of first Sandman, we had 340 speaking parts in those first 10 episodes. That’s a lot of people to get to know, and we’re just getting started. We’ve adapted, so far, 400 pages out of 3,000.”
First published by DC Comics in 1989, The Sandman is widely regarded as one of the smartest, most challenging and imaginative comic books ever made. It follows Morpheus, the lord of dreams, as he tries to rebuild his kingdom after being imprisoned by humans for nearly 100 years. He travels to Hell to meet Lucifer; he tracks down a rogue nightmare named Corinthian, who has teeth for eyes; he makes a deal with William Shakespeare; and begins a long, personal quest to undo the sins of his family, the endless, eternal personifications of aspects like death, desire, and despair.
Split largely between the waking world and the realm of the Dream, the comics are told with an unwavering sense of maturity, depth and ambition. These are thematically complex works – stories about the deep nature of stories – drawn, painted and colored by different artists, but unified by a gothic, surreal and melancholic aesthetic. Upon its release, the series was a critical and commercial hit and was hailed (perhaps unfairly, considering Alan Moore’s 1972 Swamp Thing series) as the leader of a new wave of comic books: those who, instead to be for children, they carried a more serious, literary weight.
It’s also a work Gaiman himself is extremely proud of. “I feel like Sandman is my legacy,” he says, before going on to describe it as “my baby.” However, as Gaiman himself would discover, it’s certainly not what Hollywood had in mind. Instead, throughout the ’90s and much of the early 21st century, The Sandman was seen as less of a precious and unique kid, and more of just another superhero cow.
Interrupted adaptations
“It all started in 1991,” says Gaiman, “when I was sent to meet one of the executives at Warner Bros. and she said, ‘There’s talk of a Sandman movie.’ I said, ‘Please don’t do it. ‘I’m doing the comic. and it would just be a distraction’. And she says, ‘nobody’s ever come into my office and asked me not to make a movie before.’ And I said, ‘well, I am.’ Then she said, ‘Ok , we’re not going to make a movie.” That lasted until 1996,” — the same year Gaiman’s original Sandman series ended.
Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who would go on to create the Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises, were hired to write one of the first drafts. The pair were big fans of the comics, and the script they provided aimed to capture the essence of the source material, including a sketch set around cat dreams. “We were confident we could convey the spirit, intelligence, sensitivity and brilliance of Neil’s work,” Elliot once wrote on his Wordplay blog. But when the duo submitted their script, they were told Warner Bros. hated it so much it was deemed “undeliverable,” meaning they would be denied the fee.
The point, they theorized, is that between the script’s commission and its completion, the film’s producer Jon Peters, who had produced Tim Burton’s Batman, was involved in the project and didn’t seem to understand it. Writing on Wordplay, Elliot said: “My speculations as to why the script was called ‘unsubmitted’: a) the studio wanted a free rewrite, addressing the ‘Dream of a Thousand Cats’ section (which, if they treated us respectfully, we would have); or b) Peters Productions wanted us off the project because we didn’t incorporate his single, off-the-cuff, incredibly lame suggestion that a group of teenagers at a slumber party holding a session are those that capture the dream; or c) both.”
“There was a while when Jon Peters was getting people to write scripts with giant mechanical spiders,” Gaiman says. “He had three projects, which were Sandman, Superman and Wild Wild West. And he only had one idea, which was a giant mechanical spider.” Like “The Sandman,” Tim Burton’s proposed “Superman Lives,” starring Nicolas Cage, went through its own version of development hell. The mechanical spider would eventually make its way to the famous ticket slide, Wild Wild West.
