‘The Sandman’ TV series in development
- Thread starter jefferiestubes8
- Start date
nice, right up Kripke's wheelhouse.
I'm not sure it'd work as a TV series unless they were willing to do it as an anthology show, and networks tend to shy away from those.
What would prevent it from being a viable TV series, if it were on cable? or premium cable?
Are we talking adaptation or spin off? For instance True Blood is more a spin off of Charlaine Harris' novels than an adaptation. That is, the show takes characters - some significantly altered - from the novels, and occasionally works in plots borrowed from the novels, but more often just runs out tales of its own.
I don't know how anyone but HBO or Showtime could do an adaptation series of Sandman since it began life as a horror comic series and always retained fairly horrific elements. And I'm not sure how interested I am in a spin off. The chances that such a show could capture the spirit of the original are pretty slim.
I don't know how anyone but HBO or Showtime could do an adaptation series of Sandman since it began life as a horror comic series and always retained fairly horrific elements. And I'm not sure how interested I am in a spin off. The chances that such a show could capture the spirit of the original are pretty slim.
I no expert, but I think it would be called an adaptation. Any time you move a concept from one format to another its altered to adapt to that format. So there are always some changes made. Some small like, the changing of a characters name and some larger like eliminating a character all together. And in the case of a tv show there are always original stories. A spin off would be taking a character from that property and giving them their own show/movie/novel/whatever.
e.g. The tv show Spenser For Hire is a adaptation of Parker's Spenser novels. The tv show Hawk is a spinoff of Spenser For Hire.
I can't see Sandman working on tv and still retaining what made it interesting. Maybe if they made Morpheus a teenager or gave him a female FBI agent sidekick.
J
Jetfire
Guest
So this isn't http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandman_(Wesley_Dodds)
It is this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(Vertigo)
It is this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(Vertigo)
It's got a lot of fantasy that would be difficult to do both for budget reasons and because it would be too far out there for a lot of TV audiences. The books have a lot of recurring characters but Dream is the only one that's consistently there and even then he often doesn't play a huge role in some volumes so it could be hard for audiences to care about the characters.
For the record I think it's possible to make a decent Sandman TV show and I realize that they'll have to make some changes to make it work but I'm not really optimistic about their chance of success.
yep, I'm not really familiar with the source material but will perhaps pick it up one of these days, but what exactly of it would not translate well as a series? Is it something that would need to be sfx heavy? Content you can't really ground in reality for us as viewers to relate to? I mean we are talking about dream master here, right? Would this be better suited as an adult cartoon, like Spawn animated series on HBO from a decade ago?
Ah ok, I thought that would be the case.
It's not really about the effects or even necessarily the horror content. There are ways to tiptoe around most of that stuff on network TV.
The trouble is that there aren't really main characters. The comics would have story arcs over several issues, and when the arcs were complete, the book would shift to totally different characters. All of the Endless characters (Dream, Death, Delirium, etc.) served as framing devices, more often then not. In some issues, they'd barely appear.
I'm not sure how a show would handle that. Each storyline would have to go for a few episodes, then change casts.
It could be done, and even done well, but it has an awful lot of elements that networks don't like.
The trouble is that there aren't really main characters. The comics would have story arcs over several issues, and when the arcs were complete, the book would shift to totally different characters. All of the Endless characters (Dream, Death, Delirium, etc.) served as framing devices, more often then not. In some issues, they'd barely appear.
I'm not sure how a show would handle that. Each storyline would have to go for a few episodes, then change casts.
It could be done, and even done well, but it has an awful lot of elements that networks don't like.
I have a feeling it's gonna be cookie cuttered into yet another "supernatural team fights crime, helps a human" type show.
That was my reaction, too! I thought for a split-second Smallville had found a way to bring him back and spin him off into his own show. Then I realized it had to be Gaiman's Sandman.
Oh, well. I hope it turns out well anyway...
Yeah, I know what the term "spin off" means in general tv parlance - that wasn't what I meant, which is why I gave my definition using True Blood as an example. It is not strictly an adaptation of the Harris books because it basically just uses the general outlines of the characters and creates a wholly new cloth out of it. Sookie in the books is only tangentially related to Sookie in the tv show - thus "spin off". Maybe "very, very loose adaptation" is a better term, I don't know. But we're seeing more of these kinds of projects where producers buy a book series in order to lift only very specific elements and then create something that is essentially its own animal - not really an attempt to adapt the stories from the books.
Exactly - they're going to do World's End? Do any of the Endless do more than just pass through those tales? (it's been a looooong time since I read these.) Which is what I meant by saying I imagine it would have to be a spin off, not an adaptation. Like, they'll make Dream and Death central characters who interact weekly with human beings and have family drama with the other Endless. Everyone will be very sexy (probably even Despair) and it'll be a supernatural soap opera. It would not be fair to call that an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Sandman which is a pretty specific story with a beginning, middle and end that I highly doubt will be translated to screen in any recognizable form. Besides - they'll want a tv series to last far longer (if possible) than the run of stories in the source material.
Now if they were doing a mini-series, there might be a chance it'd be an actual adaptation.
But hasn't that always been the case, especially in Television? Look at "M*A*S*H" the book vs M*A*S*H the movie vs M*A*S*H the TV show. All set at an army hospital during the Korean War with a central character named Hawkeye, but each is different in tone and and how Hawkeye is characterized. The TV show introduced characters never seen in the book or movie. Or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea the movie vs VTTBOTS the TV show. That a Sandman series would only slightly resemble the comics or chart its own course is not new or unexpected. Another example would be Planet of the Apes with different takes in prose, film, TV and comics.
A while back I heard, Kathy Reich author of the "Temperance Brennen" novels and a producer of the Bones TV show based on those novels talking about the differences between the character in the novels and the TVshow. Some fans have a hard time reconciling the two as their backstories and personalities seem different. Reich's theory is that Bones is a younger version of the character, but some fans don't buy it.
I would consider M*A*S*H the tv show at best a spin off of the original material - given the extreme tonal differences. (And Trapper John MD a spin off of a spin off.) But part of the even more significant difference in these more recent cases is the series-to-series translation. True Blood, Bones and now Sandman aren't adapting single works - they're adapting material that already exists in a series form, and making a new series out of it. That would seem to carry some epxectation that the series would proceed along similar tracks - but they don't. Maybe spin off and adaptation are both bad terms for this phenomenon - and a new word or phrase is needed.
J
Jetfire
Guest
That was my reaction, too! I thought for a split-second Smallville had found a way to bring him back and spin him off into his own show. Then I realized it had to be Gaiman's Sandman.
Oh, well. I hope it turns out well anyway...
I think it could work as a pre-Absolute Justice series with (Sandman)Wesley Dodds.
To me "spin off" has a specific meaning: taking a character introduced in a series and giveing them their own series. When you tranfer a concept from one medium to another its an adaptation no matter how faithful that transfer is. Perry Mason, Spenser for Hire, Batman, The Adventures of Superman and Tarzan ( to name but a few) were all TV shows adapted from book series and strayed in varying degrees from their source material often going their own way. So I dont see how a new term is needed for something thats been covered by an existing term for decades.
I fully expect that a Sandman TV show will only loosely follow what we saw in the comics ( if at all) and will forge a path destined to piss off more than a few fans. Maybe even me!!!
