Netflix’s adaptation of The Sandman premiered on Friday. But the 10-episode season required three years of writing, filming and editing (not to mention a creative cast including Mark Hamill as Mervyn Pumpkinhead and Patton Oswalt as the voice of Matthew Crow). I Diversity notes that this comes after Neil Gaiman refused to even allow a film adaptation for 30 years.
“Gaiman could have decided to let his dreams of a Sandbox adaptation die with the nightmare that was his last attempt: a feature film starring and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt for Warner Bros.’ The new line that collapsed in 2016…”
So why did Gaiman try again? “In a lot of ways, that’s the only question we can ask,” said Gaiman, who is executive producing and writing the series along with David Goyer (Batman: Inception and Base) and showrunner Alan Heinberg (Grey’s Anatomy “)…”[P]skillfully, it’s acceptable, well, if it’s going to happen, why not make it good?
“Sand man as a graphic novel series, as a comic book, I was getting a chance to tell the world the things I believed. It was stuff about inclusiveness. These were things about humanity. There were things about common humanity. There were things about dreams and things about death. There were words of comfort and there were words of warning. And then when I said them, they were important, and I felt that they were true, and I felt that it was right to say them; including, you have your story, and your story is important, and including, you get a lifetime. And that’s what I wanted to say.
And I don’t think these things are any less important or any less relevant now. And actually, I feel that in this strange world where sometimes I feel like people are breaking down and forming smaller and smaller groups, closing ranks and seeing anyone on the other side as an enemy, people need to be reminded that standing by them there is someone who contains thousands of worlds and each world is a door and through each door is something you never dreamed of. And beneath the surface, people are cooler than you can imagine. And I wanted to remind people of that.
And third, after doing Good Omens, I felt like I knew how to do it…”
Neil Gaiman answered questions from Slashdot readers in 2003 — and at the time he said that the idea Sand man the film “has now been taken out of the hands of the producers who have been driving it down the road to nowhere for the past 8 years”.
And Gaiman returned again in 2004 to answer more questions from a Slashdot reader. As Roblimo wrote in 2004, “there’s nothing better than a Slashdot interview with someone who not only reads and understands Slashdot, but can outsmart the trolls.”
