On August 5, 2022, The Sandman, a TV series adaptation of Neil Gaiman's beloved comic book character, dropped on Netflix, with an additional surprise episode debuting two weeks later. It was the end of a long and winding road for the project, which had experienced a lengthy development process even just as a Netflix program. Long before the streamer got its hands on this property, The Sandman was conceived for years as a major motion picture. Though the combination of such a famous and visually distinctive character and the big screen seemed to be a match made in Heaven, the feature film version of The Sandman never got off the ground.
The idea of turning The Sandman into a movie existed as early as the 1990s, with various screenwriters trying to take a crack at translating the character and his expansive mythology into the confines of a standalone feature film. The task proved challenging, though, and despite many years and lots of money poured into getting a script, a Sandman movie was dead by 2007. For years afterward, the property laid dormant, and it looked unlikely that it would ever come to exist, especially since then-recent attempts to launch movies based on DC characters that weren't Batman or Superman, namely Jonah Hex and Green Lantern, had sunk without a trace at the box office. Those features didn't bode well for the financial prospects of somebody like The Sandman on the big screen.
But then 2013 rolled around. This was the year Man of Steel hit theaters and, all of a sudden, there was more passion than ever about creating a boatload of feature film adaptations of DC Comics characters, many of them existing in an interwoven continuity. A month after Man of Steel's debut, then-president of DC Entertainment, Diane Nelson, revealed that a slew of movie adaptations of famous DC characters was on the horizon, with one of those adaptations being The Sandman. Nelson was passionate about this project and even dared to compare the property to the Harry Potter films in terms of the depth of its mythology. Considering that Harry Potter was the crown jewel of the entire Warner Bros. company, such comparisons were not to be taken lightly. There were high hopes for The Sandman on the silver screen.
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By the start of 2014, a Sandman movie began to get a whole new lease on life, thanks to Joseph Gordon-Levitt signing on to headline the project and perhaps even direct. Whatever his creative duties would be, he'd be working from a screenplay by David S. Goyer, who had experience with DC film adaptations through his work on the screenplays for the Dark Knight trilogy. With these buzzy names guiding the ship, The Sandman appeared to be on the right track. Later that year, Warner Bros. announced a barrage of movies set to be released through 2020 that would comprise the DC Extended Universe, including titles like Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
The Sandman would not be part of this continuity, but making serious headway toward existing the same year this buzzy announcement took place suggests that a rising tide of interest in all kinds of DC Comics adaptations at Warner Bros. lifted The Sandman's boat. The Sandman's place in the future plans for Warner Bros. was solidified in the summer of 2015 when it was revealed that the film would be released through the company's New Line Cinema division. The Sandman was supposed to be the start of several New Line Cinema releases adapted from titles from Vertigo, a DC Comics imprint that released comics aimed exclusively at adult audiences. Not only was The Sandman set to get off the ground, but it would kickstart a new wave of adult-oriented comic book adaptations.
However, The Sandman got a massive setback when, in March 2016, Gordon-Levitt dropped out of the project. Roughly two years after officially signing on to headline the feature, Gordon-Levitt had now departed over creative clashes with Warner Bros. There's little reason to doubt that this was the primary reason for the actor's departure, but in the greater context of his career, one can't help but wonder if other forces pulled the performer away from The Sandman. In 2016, Gordon-Levitt would only appear in Snowden (which was supposed to come out in 2015 but was delayed by nine months) among feature films.
After that, his only acting credits until a trio of live-action movies in 2020 would be a handful of voice-over credits in projects like Comrade Detective and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The actor took a break to focus on being a father, and one has to wonder if he dropped out of headlining a big blockbuster like The Sandman (a significant time commitment) as part of this self-imposed hiatus. Whatever the larger reasons for his departure, this was a massive blow to The Sandman and, in the months that followed, there weren't even quiet rumors about who could replace him as the film's titular lead.
By the end of the year, screenwriter Eric Heisserer also dropped out of The Sandman movie, though his commitments were strictly as a writer. In addition to revealing that Gordon-Levitt had left The Sandman months before the official announcement of his departure, Heisserer had still come aboard the project to pen a new draft, an indication that New Line Cinema was still committed to the film even without the leading man of (500) Days of Summer. However, Heisserer, like Gordon-Levitt, just felt New Line Cinema didn't understand what a Sandman movie needed to be to reach its full potential. As he parted ways with the film, he noted that this material could only be done justice if it was released as a TV series.
After that, no further news came out about a Sandman movie. This isn't especially surprising, not only because of the feature losing its star and screenwriter in 2016, but also the shifting trajectory of DC Comics adaptations at the start of 2017. The divisive nature of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad the year before would lead to a shift in the kind of DC movies that Warner Bros. would green-light in the future. More pressingly for The Sandman, the dreams of this title kickstarting a streak of Vertigo adaptations distributed by New Line Cinema never came to pass. The only Vertigo/New Line Cinema title that got released was The Kitchen in 2019. With this Warner Bros. imprint clearly showing little interest in Vertigo material, The Sandman's odds of ever leaping to live-action storytelling were slimmer than ever.
Of course, by the summer of 2019, it would be revealed that The Sandman would not be making it to the big screen at all. Instead, it would take cues from other Gaiman adaptations like Good Omens and be realized as a streaming program. This is where the final Netflix version would come into play, and while it had its detractors, there was largely a positive reception surrounding its arrival. All those years of false starts and unrealized ambitions for a Sandman movie were just paving the way for the property to find a proper home in the world of streaming television. Getting here could be a nightmare, but the result was a dream come true for Sandman fans.