Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been spreading his wings of late with his hitREcord collaborative online project, an executive producer credit for ‘Looper’ and directing his first film ‘Don John.’  Now he looks to be taking on a truly ambitious undertaking, adapting Neil Gaiman’s epic comic book classic, ‘The Sandman.’  The original comic presented a sprawling mythology, centered on Morpheus the master of dreams as well as his brethren, The Endless, most famously Death, presented in this version as a goth teenage girl.

A ‘Sandman’ film has long been in the works… and I mean looooooooong.  Unfortunately, no spin on the sprawling epic has managed to take off.  Numerous writers and directors have attempted to bring the concept to the big screen.  Will Gordon-Levitt be the one that can finally bring this project to fruition?

Currently, the actor appears to be slated to produce and star in the project and possibly even direct.  Unfortunately, there is no script as of yet, but Jack Thorne has been drafted to take a stab at the concept, with Gordon-Levitt, David S. Goyer and Neil Gaiman himself kicking in ideas.

The original comics ran from 1989 until 1996 and won a ravenous fan following who were attracted to the literate, out-of-the-norm concept.  It was in 1996 that the first director Roger Avary attempted to bring the concept to the screen, based on the comic storyline ‘Preludes And Nocturnes.’  After Avery abandoned the project, it passed through numerous hands, including those of Joel Schumacher, the infamous director of ‘Batman Forever’ and ‘Batman & Robin’.

While promoting ‘Sin City: A Dame To Kill For‘, Gordon-Levitt did discuss the ‘Sandman’ film, by saying:

“It’s a lot of the same people who worked on the Nolan ‘Batman’ movies. It’s really exciting. There’s not a script yet, we’re still kind of working it out because it’s such a complicated adaptation because ‘Sandman’ wasn’t written as novels. ‘Sin City’ was written as a novel. ‘Sandman’ is 75 episodic issues. There’s a reason people have been trying and failing to adapt ‘Sandman’ for the past 20 years…. You know, we’re still in the middle of it, so I don’t want to make any claims, but I think we’ve got the right ideas.”

So, while we won’t be visiting the Dreaming in theaters for a few years, it sounds like the wheels are at least in motion.

What do you think?  Do you think Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the right person to guide this project?

Source: Cinema Blend