According to Deadline.com, writer Jack Thorne, best known for the British television series The Fades, has been set to write the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s classic DC Comics/Vertigo series The Sandman at Warner Bros., based on an original pitch made by DC movie guru David S. Goyer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is producing with Goyer, and the idea here is for him to star and possibly direct. Gordon-Levitt made his feature directorial debut with last year’s porn addiction movie Don Jon, but the world of The Endless is a huge leap forward in ambition. Neil Gaiman is still attached as an executive producer.

I’m still having trouble picturing Sandman as a movie; my feeling is it would be much better as a TV series, which the producers of Preacher finally realized (and which I hope happens with another Vertigo classic, Y: The Last Man). There are stories within the greater Sandman framework that are smaller and could work as a two hour movie, so I’m not giving up all hope. The scripts David Goyer handles alone are almost never as good as when he has collaborated with other writers, so I’m glad he’s handing the reins of Sandman off to someone else.  Whatever happens, it is sure to closer to Neil Gaiman’s vision than the Sandman movie producer Jon Peters was working on in the late nineties. Seriously, Google “Jon Peters + Sandman” and witness the horror.