Joseph Gordon-Levitt exits adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Sandman’

The Sandman“s rocky road to the big screen just got rockier.

Neil Gaiman”s acclaimed comic book series about the lord of dreams, first published in 1989, has had a hell of a time getting adapted to film or TV.

The latest news: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was set to direct and star in a film adaptation of the comic, has left the project.

The Inception actor decided to leave the project in the aftermath of the Sandman adaptation shifting from Warner Bros. to WB subsidiary New Line Cinema. Here”s what he wrote on Facebook:

“I came to realize that the folks at New Line and I just don't see eye to eye on what makes Sandman special, and what a film adaptation could/should be. So unfortunately, I decided to remove myself from the project.”

He acknowledged that making a Sandman movie is an “ambitious task of adapting one of the most beloved and boundary-pushing titles in the world of comics.” You can read his full post here.

Gordon-Levitt announced his exit on Facebook on Saturday afternoon, one day after The Hollywood Reporter revealed that horror writer Eric Heisserer (Final Destination 5, the 2011 The Thing remake) would pen the screenplay for the film. David S. Goyer, best known for his work on Christopher Nolan”s Batman movies, wrote the treatment for this Sandman.

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