David S. Goyer knows a thing or two about adapt comic books. To date he's penned screenplays for The Crow: City of Angels, which was inspired by James O'Barr's Crow comics, three Blade movies, Batman Begins and the summer hit Man of Steel With the last of those pulling in an incredible $662 million worldwide, Warner Bros. is happy to keep Goyer around, and currently has him attached to Batman vs. Superman and presumably the eventual Justice League movie. So now is a pretty sweet time for Goyer to push for his own passion project, and word has it that's exactly what's he is up to.
Badass Digest reports Goyer has pitched an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's signature comic Sandman to Warner Bros - but warns this could-be project is in the very earliest of stages. Essentially now it's just talk. Their source says that notable comic book writer Geoff Johns is lending his weight to Goyer's proposition. Moreover, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is said to be interested in working on this could-be feature.
Again, these are really just whispers for the time being. We don't know if Warner Bros is interested in Goyer's Sandman concept, and it's unclear what part Gordon-Levitt would want to play in the film. Perhaps he's hoping for the lead of Morpheus, but as the actor's been branching out into producing (Looper) and directing (Don Jon), it's entirely possible he's looking to work behind the camera here. Realistically, this is a rumor that is likely to go unsubstantiated for some time. There's no report that even Gaiman has been alerted to this possible picture, and Gordon-Levitt is notoriously tight-lipped about his work until its time to promote it.
Of course, this isn't first attempt to turn Sandman into a feature. Back in 2007, Joel Schumacher, who will never shake his reputation as the man who put nipples on the Batsuit, was said to be pursuing a Sandman movie. Pirates of the Caribbean scribes Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio drafted a script that had Roger Avery attached for a time. Then William Farmer, who contributed to the Jonah Hex script gave it a go. In 2010, Matthew Vaughn, who'd previously adapted Gaiman's fantasty novel Stardust, confessed he wanted to take up the Sandman mantel, but lamented the movie was "stuck in development hell."
Is it possible that Goyer, who presumably has some serious grease in Hollywood with the success of his superhero scripts, could be the one to finally pull Sandman out of the muck of development hell and place him up on the big screen? For now we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, you can weigh in below with your opinion on whether or not Goyer--and his proposed team of Johns and Gordon-Levitt--is right for Sandman.
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