Netflix’s TV series adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s classic graphic novel series “The Sandman” has scored plaudits from all over.
The series finally arrives after several decades of attempts to adapt the property for the screen. Arguably the most infamous version was one that had “Wild Wild West” producer Jon Peters attached and which was penned by William Farmer.
In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Gaiman revealed he leaked the script to the media after he thought it was such a poor effort to adapt his comic:
“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.”
Gaiman says he hasn’t read that whole script, rather “I read as much of the script as I could take… it was a mess. It never got better than a mess. It had giant mechanical spiders in it.”
He adds that the script had Lucifer, Morpheus, and the Corinthian as identical triplets, and it was a race to obtain three key elements from the comic before midnight on 1999. Gaiman goes on to share his take on what he read:
“It was the worst script that I’ve ever read by anybody. A guy in Jon Peters’ office phoned me up, and he 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.'”
Several other versions of “The Sandman” died before production until June 2019, when Netflix signed a deal with Warner Bros. to produce the series and gave it an order of eleven episodes. So came this month’s series.
