the sandman

Tom Sturridge will lead the series as Dream.

James McAvoy leads the audio adaptation of the comic book series.

Making its debut on November 29, 1988, author Neil Gaiman's The Sandman ran for seventy-five issues, and by its conclusion in 1996, it had sucked in several audiences that typically didn't read comics, including academics, bibliophiles, and even comics' hardest get; women. What is it about The Sandman that makes it such a crossover success?

The things about The Sandman that I recall the most fondly aren't what most others think of. In my experience, an overwhelming percentage of readers are quick to talk about the characters, or the strength of writer Neil Gaiman's voice. I definitely can't argue against either of those, but what I really appreciated about The Sandman was Gaiman and his artists' ingeniously subtle tricks with symbolism and structure. The big points were always echoed in some very clever ways that never disrupted the natural flow of the story to point out how ornate the plot actually was. Gaiman and J.H. Williams III have managed to condense pretty much all the major themes of the seventy-five issue run of The Sandman into The Sandman: Overture.

The DC foothold on TV isn’t losing traction anytime soon, as now that CBS Supergirl has her pilot marching orders, so too does FOX’s Lucifer series, derived from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series, now have a greenlight. Not only that, but Jerry Bruckheimer and Len Wiseman have been added to the talent pool bringing Lucifer to the screen.

Warner Bros. has been trying to adapt Neil Gaiman’s classic ‘Sandman’ graphic novels into a film for years with little success, but now that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is set to direct and David S. Goyer is involved, the project is picking up steam. Gaiman himself has been working closely with Gordon-Levitt, Goyer, and writer Jack Thorne on finally bringing ‘Sandman’ to the big screen, and he thinks Tom Hiddleston would be the perfect leading man.

While most of us have been very occupied with the more major superhero movie news out of Marvel and DC, we haven’t forgotten about another DC project in development over at Warner Bros.: Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sandman,’ which has been in development for quite a while now. First announced late last year, it’s been a while since we’ve heard any news about the project, but Gordon-Levitt and writer David Goyer finally have an update for us.

Jack Thorne has been tapped by Warner Bros. to script The Sandman, following a treatment by Davis S. Goyer based on the bestselling and sacrosanct Vertigo comic book series written by Neil Gaiman.

UPDATE (11/12/13]: Sandman: Overture writer Neil Gaiman has accepted the majority of blame for the delay. He wrote on his blog: We’re both really sorry about the delay. It’s unprofessional, and is mostly due to the giant signing tour I was on from June, and me not getting script written on the tour, with knock-on effects. We’re hoping it’ll be the only delay though.   ORIGINAL STORY CONTINUES: Fro

Among its many other honors, Vertigo’s The Sandman has the distinction of being the portal through which a huge number of readers got their first look at a theretofore mysterious and unseen artifact: an actual comic book script. Available in numerous editions and formats now but Initially published in 1991 as a supplemental feature in the Dream Country paperback, writer Neil Gaiman’s script for th