📚 Why Neil Gaiman Finally Allowed 'The Sandman' to be Adapted for Netflix

Netflix's "Sandman" adaptation premiered Friday. But the 10-episode season required three years of writing, filming and editing (not to mention an imaginative cast including Mark Hamill as Mervyn Pumpkinhead and Patton Oswalt as the voice of Matthew the Raven). And Variety points out this followed a full 30 years of Neil Gaiman refusing to even allow an adaptation to happen. "Gaiman could have decided to let dreams of an adaptation of "The Sandman" die with the nightmare that was the most recent attempt: a feature film starring and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt for Warner Bros.' New Line, which fell apart in 2016..." So why did Gaiman try again? "In a lot of ways, it's the only question that we can ask," said Gaiman, who is executive producer and writer on the series, alongside David Goyer ("Batman Begins" and "Foundation") and showrunner Allan Heinberg ("Grey's Anatomy").... "[P]artly, it's accepting, well OK, if it's going to happen, why not make it good? "Sandman as a graphic novel series, as comics, was me getting to say things to the world that I believed. They were things about inclusivity. They were things about humanity. There were things about shared humanity. There were things about dreams and things about death. There were words of comfort and there were words of warning. And back then when I said them, they were important and I felt that they were true and I felt it was right to say them; including, you have your story and your story is important, and including, you get a lifetime. And those are the things I wanted to say. And I don't feel that any of those things are less important or less relevant now. And in fact, I feel in this sort of weird world in which sometimes I feel like people are fragmenting and forming into smaller and smaller groups and closing ranks and regarding anybody on the other side as the enemy, that people need to be reminded that standing next to them is somebody who contains a thousand worlds and every world is a door and through every door is somewhere that you've never dreamed of. And people are cooler under the surface than you would ever imagine. And I wanted to remind people of that. And then the third thing, which was, having made "Good Omens," I felt like I knew how to do this.... " Neil Gaiman answered questions from Slashdot readers in 2003 — and at time was already saying that the idea of a Sandman movie had "currently been taken out of the hands of the producers who've led it down the Road to Nowhere for the last 8 years." And Gaiman returned again in 2004 to answer more questions from Slashdot reader. As Roblimo wrote in 2004, "There is nothing better than a Slashdot interview with someone who not only reads and understands Slashdot but can out-troll the trolls."

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