Corona | Coming Attractions

For years Warner Bros. tried to turn Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic book series into a movie. That didn't work out.

And then last year there was news that WB TV wanted to try and make The Sandman into a television show. How anyone could pull off a faithful depiction of The Endless and their phantasmagorical realms, plus locales like Hell, the ancient past, parallel realms of nightmare and shadow, plus the occasional trip to Los Angeles or another major American city, was a question at the forefront of the minds of the comic's fans.

But Warner Bros. did try. They hired Eric Kripke, the creator and showrunner of The CW's Supernatural TV show, to try and give it a go. Kripke did indeed try, but we've just learned that things have, once again, not worked out for The Sandman show.

Kripke spilled the news to The Hollywood Reporter, specifically saying that, "Unfortunately, for a lot of varying reasons, Sandman is not in the works, at least for this season." So, possibly, it might happen a year or two from now. Maybe.

He didn't inform us as to how far his Sandman idea got, if there was a pilot script written or if it didn't collate any further than a dream in Morpheus' twinkling eyes.

When the attempt to turn The Sandman into a movie began, the first script was harshly criticized for its low-brow approach to Gaiman's rich mythology and intricate narratives. The second major attempt to try and hammer out a feature length story was done by Roger Avary, and it was much closer to the source material. Still, that couldn't move the project any further ahead, and it fell into development hell for ten years.