Neil Gaiman Reveals Details Of Scrapped ‘Sandman’ And ‘Books Of Magic’ Film Adaptations

Ever wondered what an adaptation of Vertigo's Sandman would have looked like hat it hit the big screen? The Empire Film Podcast, a prolific source of comics-related newsover the past couple weeks, asked writer Neil Gaiman that very question. The info that the acclaimed author offered up is... less than encouraging.

Gaiman also described a head-scratcher of a Books of Magic adaptation. You can read some of the highlights of his descriptions or listen to the whole podcast after the jump.

In regards to the Sandman movie, for which artist Jill Thompson crafted some early production art, Gaiman says he couldn't even finish reading one version of the script:

He was kept by electromagnets underneath New York and it must have been about 1997 or '98 because it was a millennium based plot. [The lead characters] had to do some stuff before the millennium, the lead characters were brothers, Lucifer, The Corinthian and Sandman were brothers, and it was this race against time to gather a bunch of MacGuffins before the millennium.

As for The Books of Magic, early drafts of the script were to Gaiman's liking, but studio meddling made it a mess:

I called DC Comics and said, 'This has nothing in common with Books of Magic anymore other than the heroes name is Tim Hunter and the movie is called Books of Magic. And if this movie happens, all it will do is upset any fans of Tim Hunter and the Books of Magic and make them feel used. It's perfectly adequate for what it is, which is terrible, so why don't we ask if [the studio] can pay us off and they can use the script and we take back the name 'Books of Magic' and they can call their hero something else.'"

Here's the full podcast:

[Via Empire and ComicBookMovie]

Filed Under: books of magic, BooksOfMagic, Jill Thompson, JillThompson, Neil Gaiman, NeilGaiman, Sandman, vertigo

Categories: DC, Movies, Vertigo