After floundering in development hell for many years, Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman” is finally a TV series, thanks to Netflix. And the critical consensus of the show is, well, pretty good? It may be almost too faithful an adaptation, but for those who love the comic, it’s a great take on a project many thought unfilmable. And in this day and age of green-screen movies and TV, isn’t there some solace to be taken in a sprawling fantasy world adapted correctly?
Neil Gaiman thinks so because he divulged to Rolling Stone in a recent interview that he had to sabotage an earlier attempt to put “The Sandman” on the big screen. Gaiman declined several offers to make his beloved comic into a movie over the past thirty years. However, in one case, an idea from “Wild Wild West” and “A Star Is Born” producer Jon Peters had Gaiman resort to sabotage. And why so? In Gaiman’s own words: “It was the worst script that I’ve ever read by anybody.” In a word, ouch.
Here’s Gaiman’s backstory to the incident: “A guy in Jon Peters’ office phoned me up and said, ‘So Neil, have you had a chance to read the script we sent you?’ And I said, ‘Well, yes. Yes, I did. I haven’t read all of it, but I’ve read enough.’ He says, ‘So, pretty good. Huh?’ And I said, ‘Well, no. It really isn’t.’ He said, ‘Oh, come on. There must have been stuff in there you loved.’ I said, ‘There was nothing in there I loved. There was nothing in there I liked. It was the worst script that I’ve ever read by anybody. It’s not just the worst Sandman script. That was the worst script I’ve ever been sent.'”
But why was this script so horrendous? Gaiman gave some details of the script’s “really stupid” ideas. “It had giant mechanical spiders in it… Lucifer, Morpheus and the Corinthian were identical triplets. They were a family of identical brothers, and it was all a race to see who could get the ruby, the helm and the bag of sand before midnight on 1999, before the new millennium started, because whoever got it would be the winner. That was the plot.” As for the tone the script went for, Gaiman didn’t have a clue. “I’m not sure if it would’ve been an action movie or quite what it would’ve been,” he added. “t was a mess. It never got better than a mess.”
But Gaiman’s disapproval wasn’t enough to axe the script, so he took matters into his own hands. “I sent the script to Ain’t It Cool News, which back then was read by people. And I thought, I wonder what Ain’t It Cool News will think of the script that they’re going to receive anonymously. And they wrote a fabulous article about how it was the worst script they’d ever been sent. And suddenly the prospect of that film happening went away. And instead Jon Peters turned his attention to ‘Wild Wild West.'”
Of course, Peters has gone on to produce hits like the 2018 version of “A Star Is Born” (as well as the first 1978 remake), “Man Of Steel,” and Michael Mann’s 2001 film “Ali.” So, he’s not that broken up that he didn’t make “The Sandman.” And Gaiman got the faithful adaptation he wanted in the new Netflix series, which has soared to the global top 10 for three consecutive weeks. Is a Season Two renewal on the way? If it’s up to Gaiman’s standards, it’s a sure thing.
