Sandman could have been adapted into a film or a series long before the one that was released this year on Netflix. Neil Gaiman has received countless proposals over the past decades to turn his comics into fiction. Even Michael Jackson himself offered to play Morpheus, the anti-hero of Sandman, in a feature film. It is the author of the comics who told this brilliant anecdote in a podcast entitled Happy Sad Confused.
“In 1996 I was taken to Warner Studio where the chairman of Warner Bros. called me to tell me that Michael Jackson had called him the day before! He had asked him if he could play the role of Morpheus in a Sandman movie…“, confides the British writer. Gaiman then said no but did not give an explanation on the reasons for his refusal. “There was a lot of interest in this title and they knew it was one of the crown jewels. So what did I think of it at the time? I was like, ‘Ooh…“A reaction between surprise and embarrassment to the proposal of the King of Pop.
More than 20 years later, it was finally Tom Sturridge who landed the coveted role for a dazzling performance. “I figured that after a few weeks we would have a shortlist of five or ten people as good as him, as fair as him, who would be able to say the lines as well as him. But after a week, we had Tom. After two weeks, we still had Tom. After a month, we still had Tom. So after six weeks, we told Warner Bros. that it was him. He had this certain something in the way he said the lines, this thoughtful way of finding the poetry, the beauty and the melody of the sentences of Morpheus. It was wonderful. It was right“.
Thibaut Falconnat