If you’re a fan of British author Neil Gaiman’s former monthly comics series Sandman and have always wanted to see a live-action version, then The Hollywood Reporter has news for you.
Over at their Heat Vision blog, reporters Borys Kit and James Hibberd broke the exclusive news that Warner Bros. TV is “in the midst of acquiring television rights from sister company DC Entertainment and in talks with several writer-producers about adapting the 1990s comic. At the top of the list is Eric Kripke, creator of the CW’s horror-tinged ‘Supernatural.'”
That howl you heard around 6 pm Pacific, by the way? Was the wailing and gnashing of teeth of many a mature female comics fan who knows and loves both Sandman and “Supernatural” and knows exactly how Kripke could possibly fuck it all up.
The bit of good news from the blog that all fans are holding onto lies in these two sentences from Kit and Hibberd:
[Neil Gaiman] is not involved in the new developments, though since it is early in the process, that may change. In fact, securing Gaiman will prove key for the project to go forward.
Gaiman, who is currently in the U.K. taking care of business related to his upcoming “Doctor Who” episode, didn’t comment on his Twitter account when the news broke here in the U.S. because he was on a Skype call to the Melbourne Writer Fest in Australia as one of their events. (Damn, don’t you love technology, these days?)
Jillian Pullara says:
For those of us who are not Supernatural savvy, how is this bad? How could he fuck it up?
Trisha Lynn says:
“Supernatural” isn’t an ensemble show like “Sandman” would have to be, and so with that one, almost every female character in “Supernatural” has been almost unlikable. Apparently, things came to a head in Season 3:
http://marinarusalka.livejournal.com/401763.html
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/187/148
Lincoln Eddy says:
My issue here is that, looking at Supernatural (and I haven’t watched it, just caught some trailers and previews etc) the show doesn’t have the same sort of vibe. At all. Sandman would need to be very epic, and I’m not sure how that would work out here.
Jillian Pullara says:
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to judge this man by one thing he’s done. Like Joss Whedon: if you had looked at Buffy and knew that he was going to do Sandman, there would be a disconnect. That was my same problem with people judging Dollhouse by Firefly – two completely different vibes that you need to take independently of each other.
Plus, I don’t think Sandman has to “feel epic”, while the series has an epic scope, the stories themselves are insular, revolving mostly around Dream and his interactions with his family, the epicness that does happen builds very slowly until the end (which is epic).
I’m going to have to watch more Supernaturall now.