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Will DC’s SANDMAN Replace SMALLVILLE??
I am – Hercules!!
The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd and Borys Kit report Warner Bros. TV is ginning up a potential TV series based on Neil Gaiman’s entertaining and much-beloved “Sandman” graphic novels.
This seems like the least likely broadcast TV series ever, but maybe it’ll end up on Time Warner’s HBO.
If it ends up on The CW (which is half-owned by Time Warner), they’ll probably make Dream a goth bartender named Drew "Sandy" Endles, working for his good-looking but blind big brother Desmond (nicknamed "D.E."!) alongside their other siblings: hottie waitress Dee, fat cashier Deb and androgynous maitre d’ Desi. Dolores is their snotty kid sister with the concerning interest in substance abuse. And the big bad will be their long-lost black-sheep brother, Declan "Destruction" Endles, who was last seen getting a dishonorable discharge in Iraq!
I could see it ending up a lot like The CW’s horrible 2008 Greek-god dramedy “Valentine.”
Fans of the The WB’s “Tarzan” and The CW's “Supernatural” will be excited to learn Eric Kripke leads the list of writer-producers Warners is keen to mastermind the “Sandman” series.
Find all of the Reporter’s story on the matter here.
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The stories were excellent! One of my favorites.
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Sep 01, 2010 8:54:43 PM CDT
Thought they'd replace Smallville with something more superheroi
by eastcoastavenger
Smallville only recently starting building momentum again and will most likely go out on a pretty high note. Conventional wisdom would want to continue that with some other DC hero property.
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Dont see this translating well to regular TV.
HBO, just maybe. -
Don't no shit about Sandman though, but I don't much care for your smarmy fucking attitude towards it.
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This is not going to be good, this is not something DC or the CW really want to be doing with a comic that is as good as this, didn't they learn anything from the Birds Of Prey series?
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huh.
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in a weird "Tales Of The Sandman" way, but even then I don't see it being a series that would get a greenlight
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and Mutant X and Heroes and soon The Cape and No Ordinary Family.
It's like you need Batman & Robin before you can get to The Dark Knight -
Hate Herc's snarky douche attitude in the story. Lemme guess, Herc, you'll cover it about as often as True Blood or anything else you don't like - once every month or so if you feel like it.
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Dodds died in Smallville's Absolute Justice episodes
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I can see your point, you need to do truly awful before you get to greatness, but placing Dream, Death and Destiny on regular TV...taking the source material which is pretty good in my honest opinion and adapting it for screen...it needs to be done right. Maybe Kripke can do it. I personally don't see this one seeing the light of day
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I hereby forbid you from reading my column. Kindly get your TV news from any of the 100,000 or more other Internet sites that cover television.
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(or Showtime or Starz, because they can presumably buy Warner shows as well) and they actually tell the story that's in the comics, this could be amazing.
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but it belongs on a channel like HBO where the stories can be told the right way. I imagine this project is being considered because the CW execs know that the Smallville audience is about to bail on them and randomly picked one of the more popular DC/Vertigo properties not realizing what it was. If this did get made it would most likely be some tween drama abomination.
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There's no way the CW could tell the story in the comics, that level of blood and psychotic imagery from the first collection alone would be so heavily censored as to be incoherent
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agreed
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Vampire murder sodomy, drug tripping gay wizards, incestuous white trash werepanthers, white trash hillbilly murdering vampires, white trash witch abortion rituals, drunken white trash con man who is not Sawyer and transforms into a dog/fly/bull/bartender, white trash half-fairies, and fucking Tara who is either crying or on the verge of tears in every motherfucking scene she's in, in every fucking episode for 3 fucking seasons!
But no Preacher, cuz you know, that'd be too much.
But hey, you know what? The Preacher movie might have some director signed that know one knows the identity of so that's kinda news isn't it? -
will you promise to stop reporting on comic book movies so I don't accidently read one of your articles on the main page?
Thanks in advance. -
I thought they were going with the Blue Beetle as a possible replacement for Smallville? Heck, can't they just do Wonder Woman series, we know for sure that they're not going to film that anytime soon. I think I'd almost prefer an animated version of Sandman than a live action one, DC's animated department isn't doing too bad at the moment.
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Isn't this about the 3-4th comic book replacement that's been tossed out there? The Aquaman/Mercy Reef fiasco, the proposed Blue Beetle series, the Young Bruce Wayne, the Green Arrow and Supergirl spinoffs...
Blue sky proposals to cash in on the kinda/sort ongoing TV/comic book fad (despite Heroes' crash and burn, we've got three new superhero series coming up, four including The Phantom) do not a Sandman series make. -
you missed "The Graysons" - "Robin the even earlier years" off your possible replacements list...
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Exiles
X-Force
New Mutants
The Punisher
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the comic book was one of the smartest well written books period.I would love to see this done only if HBO or someone is committed to representing this story in all it's gothic splendor
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A la the Green Lantern Corps comic, where some of the periphery characters take center stage.
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I love love love the comic, its absolutely a perfect, magical, amazing piece of work. Its one of the few things I'd never want to see an adaptation of because I think it already exists so perfectly in its current form. CW, Starz, HBO, I just don't see anyway to translate this to TV and do it justice. Though I'll happily admit that I may just lack the necessary imagination, I'd love to be proven wrong. I just don't see it happening.
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Sep 01, 2010 9:37:25 PM CDT
I thought "Blue Beetle" was gonna be the next "Smallville"
by triple_j_72
Make up yer mind already... jeez...
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There was talk of a horrible movie script years ago, and he had some sort of veto power. I can't see this happening. Anyway, what I'd like to see is an anthology on HBO or the like featuring all of the Endless, expanding on them more.
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Or The Bad News Bears.
Or M.A.S.K.
Or a new original show about an Israeli commando who is also a werefalcon who flies into a warp-zone that transports him back in time to the Vietnam War where he teaches soldiers modern warfare techniques and fights side by side with them in the shit until the day he has a nervous breakdown and begins to question
A. werefalcons
B. time-travel
C. the motives behind the vietnam war
and as the hysteria takes him over he blacks out and awakens in a fortress surrounded by a moat filled with prehistoric alligators and a humanoid dragon named Same Asby-four taunts him with stories of the pleasure he received after murdering the werefalcons mother while the child watched, and then he uses his magic staff to open a new warp zone and the commando is banished to civil war era Texas where he fights in the civil war until the day Same Asby-four meets him on the battlefield and surrounds them with a 10 story wall of fire so they can have a thunderdome style firedome deathmatch and as werefalcon drives his bayonet through the sternum of the dragon man a warp zone is opened and we next see our falcon hero perched on a samurai sword in a green field filled with cherry blossoms and as the camera pans back it reveals the samurai to be a robot... -
is to see how the ratings/reaction to the Blue Beetle/Booster Gold episode of Smallville will turn out. From what I read, the Blue Beetle spinoff would consist of Booster Gold helping him on learning how to be a hero. Also, Ted Kord will be mentioned in the Smallville episode says Geoff Johns. The kid Blue Beetle I am not a fan of, but it could work if they bring in other heroes in and out.
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and I request that John Hyams direct the pilot as to set the tone for the series in terms of how the fights should go down.
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craves my column so much he's going to keep reading it (and my funnbook movie posts) after he's banned. He'll deny this but won't be able to help himself. Sweetest irony!!
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The rights of the character and comics rest solely with DC (and by extension the WB). Gaiman, unfortunately, gets no say on what they do with it.
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The fact that you can't help but use double exclamation points when you talk about me??
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first of all, Herc, your satire of what horrors could befall Gaiman's masterwork in CW's hands are torn straight from my nightmares. i don't give a shit about many intellectual properties, but this is one i care about more deeply than many other things.i'll keep it brief, but:
-i strongly believe that the way into and out of Dream's story, as far as mainstream Hollywood is concerned, is none other than Hob Gadling.
-An older, less known actor needs to play Dream. NOT JOHNNY DEPP. (I've always imagined Nick Cave, both in voice and appearance)-A movie trilogy seems to me to be the way to go (very loosely, Season of Mists with salient plot from Dolls House would be the first, Brief Lives the second, Kindly Ones/The Wake third and final).
-Hopefully, though, neither my feeble ideas nor anyone else's will ever see the light of day in this regard. The comics are better than any live-action representation any of us can imagine, including myself. -
what is it about?
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best just read it, but i'll try... thematically, it's a deeply 1990s meditation on the privileges of power and the nature of the self-destructive impulse.plot-wise, it's about seven immortal siblings who all embody different aspects of the human psyche, which most often focusses on the second-eldest brother Dream. it concerns his (and their) adventures and the consequences therefrom, in often mythologically referential miliuex.
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Fuckin right!!! This could so work as an HBO show like jim hensons the storyteller. Or even like tales from the crypt where each episode is a direct adaption of one of the comics.
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I really don't know what to think. "Sandman" has so much potential to be something spectacular if it's done right, but in the wrong hands it would be a travesty. The last thing I want to see is Gaiman's work reduced to CW teenybopper fodder. But if HBO or Showtime or, hell, the BBC were involved and could commit the money to give this the scope it needs, I'd be all for it.
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Somebody asked what the series is about? Dream, aka the Sandman, is the personification and ruler of all Dreaming, older and more powerful than most gods, but has a weakness for humanity. His siblings include Destiny, Death, Destruction, Despair, Desire, and Delirium. Like all families, the seven Endless do not get along.
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...no goddam way
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Young Bruce Wayne traveling the world and learning various skills is much better than a Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle Show.Whoever thought putting Gaiman's Sandman on the CW should be fired.
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"that level of blood and psychotic imagery from the first collection alone would be so heavily censored as to be incoherent"
Says someone who hasn't watched Supernatural at all. The amount of blood and violence on that show from the last 2 seasons is surprising. When was the last time you saw someones head get shot and explode on network TV? Or a room full of dismembered corpses? The only things they wouldn't be able to show are some of the sexual scenes from the comics. Ironically enough, most of those scenes that happened in the first series of Sandman happened off panel anyway. -
If you write a biased article and come off as a dick, don't be surprised when you're called out on it. Especially on this website. "Fans of the The WB’s “Tarzan” and The CW's “Supernatural” will be excited to learn Eric Kripke leads the list of writer-producers Warners is keen to mastermind the “Sandman” series." No ones says "fans of "Alien 4" and "Firefly" will be pleased that Joss Whedon etc etc etc." Especially when that person's most recent work was a success. Grow up.
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@hatemphd Kripke doesn't have any other TV credits to list.
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+1 aw hell +10
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I can't see this as a TV series.
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Birds of pray was cancelled way before it should have been...that show was never given a chance..followed smallville from the begining..now its finally doing great...(I only wish they would make tom welling the new superman in the movies...I mean come on 10 years of character development...and he deserves it..
I thought at one I heard they were gonna do a series called "Adventures of yound dick grayson"..that was a few years ago..A bruce wayne one would be alot better....Sandman should be a pay cable show..for it to do justice..even if I havent read it for a long time now....I still get a little upset at the stupidity that DC wont give Tom welling and comp. a shot at the big screen...Peace people... -
It WAS set up at HBO in exactly the mode you suggested. But WBTV snatched it. HBO was preparing to make a full-on rated R hour long version when WB smelled more cash in broadcast...
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I would love to see a "Green Arrow series..with the current character..
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Please, Hollywood.
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WBTV killed that option. HBO wanted it. But WBTV has more muscle inside the TW hierarchy. So HBO was pushed aside. I know cause I work there. At least I used to...
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is the show they should be doing, not this! But in all honesty, to replace Smallville with another show to capture that same audience you need to be doing something like The Flash!
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Sep 02, 2010 1:21:11 AM CDT
couldnt be worse than what was proposed as the movie version
by brabon300
where dream was a two fisted he man fighting his way through hellthe cw shouldnt touch this, as they will dumb it down and make the cast all teensagree with ceejaynightwing, do sandman mystery theater...which is a great take on the kirby sandman
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cuz it would make a great series for darabont to adapt
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Agreed...SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATER would've been great for TV. The pulpy style is even in line with what WB's done with BIRDS OF PREY and SMALLVILLE.
SANDMAN *could* work, but man, it'll need a lotta love from the producers...I'm talking MAD MEN or BREAKING BAD levels of love. Don't have my hopes up. -
As of late 2008, Sam Mendes was wanting to turn it into a movie:
http://bit.ly/3BLfNJ -
to do Bond, no word on him returning to Preacher after Bind fell through. I think slashfilm just posted an interview excerpt from the producer saying they've got an unnamed director currently signed onto the proect.
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...as an animated series. Each episode could cover an issue of the comic, done in various animation styles. Something about Dream and Delirium's search for Destruction strikes me as very Anime in style.
And Herc, dude, your description proves you have what it takes to write horror. Scared the fuck outta me!
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Kripke is a good writer. The problem on Supernatural wasn't Kripke -- the problem was that he couldn't write every episode himself. The premiere and finale of every season -- always written by Kripke -- were by far (by far!) the best episodes of Supernatural. They were so much better than the standard episodes it was like they belonged to a different show. Sure -- Ben Edlund was also quite good. He always is. But his episodes didn't feel like standard Supernatural episodes either; his trick is always to turn on the comedy. And he's good at it. But even his episodes weren't great compared to Kripke's.
I'm sure a lot of it is just that it was Kripke's show, (past-tense intentional) and he probably felt a lot more freedom to deviate from the show's formulas than the other writers did -- but the other part of it is, he's actually good. I'm not the biggest fan of Supernatural -- but Kripke is actually good.
They should hire him. He's pretty much exactly the right choice for this.
But hopefully he doesn't bring anybody from the Supernatural writing staff with him... -
Lesson learned.
There is no reason why this couldn't be done on television. The story is what matters. Not the medium. Just because the CW is generally shit doesn't mean they'll never be able to do something great. Fox did the X-Files. Sci Fi did Battlestar Galactica. -
As an X-Men on acid type show.
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What HBO could use more of and CW could never make true... Please let HBO make this and KING'S Under the Dome... please! ASAP! "",
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Sep 02, 2010 5:52:11 AM CDT
Sandman is one of the books that makes comics an art form
by shutupfanboy
I love the books, but I hate CW. I have zero faith even with their Supernatural creed for CW to get this done right. Look how fucked Smallville is. 10 seasons til Superman flies and puts on the suit, but everyone including Lana can fly. Sandman is one of those great stories that comes around every 5 or 10 years that makes you love comics. I will say the end if they get that far will probably piss people off.
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as graphic novels and be left alone. It's really the only way to enjoy the stories. Even if it is adapted word for word and shot for shot it still will not work. Take Watchmen for example. With the exception of the ending, the entire film mirrored the graphic novel and yet it just didn't feel right. And it was made by someone who actually cared about the story. Do you think the money hungry shit heads at CW will treat the Sandman stories with the respect they deserve?
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years and years of development hell and then Neil says "NO"
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...Gaiman is pretty good about protecting the product. He supposedly had final approval on the various atrocious film scripts that have been written over the last decade, and 86'd them. I could be wrong of course; for all I know, this new incarnation is a frame-perfect adaptation of the whole series. I doubt it though. In any event, the story in Variety that they are optioning or purchasing the TV rights does not a greenlight make. It's more of the thumbs up for the greenlight. You know...the gang's away. The one, two...buckle my shoe. Yep. They're all gonna' be laughin'. Laughin' at you. Laughin' at the big, fat asshole.
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Thank you for opening my big fat asshole eyes.
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Warner Brothers will catch an insane amount of shit if they put this on their pitiful CW network.
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Set, you know, in England. With English actors.
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Sandman on the CW would be The Worst Comic Adaptation of All Time. Gaiman deserves better.
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Would be a brilliant spin off after the GL movie next summer. Just sayin'.
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He's never had final approval of anything, which isn't unusual, authors generally don't. All the rights belong to DC, Gaiman has said as much a few times over the years.
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cw nooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ugh plz hbo pick this up plz!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Is that a real word? Is it a real word used correctly? Just because Variety makes up a word, and keeps using it, doesn't make it real, even when used in the same context they do. Hey, don't get snarky, it's a perfectly cromulent question.
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is a marvelous show. Much like JMS's Babylon5, it was the Xfiles evil twin. Xfiles mythology eps generally meandered through suckage, occasionally colliding with an 'Invisible Elephant.' X one-off monster-hunts were great.
Supernatural and B5 were pretty watchable on one-offs, Supernatural's one-off comedies tneded to be a hoot. But the Mythos eps were GREAT, and felt HUGE. I actually prefer the Supernatural 'Big Bad' stories to Buffy Big Bad stories. Kripke really took whole seasons to do the setup. Supernatural season 2, 3,and 4 were each big like Buffy Season 5. -
So, if Kripke is involved, I'm in for a tivo Season pass.
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staying faithful to the source material
They'd have to buy rights to a hella lot of characters
So it'll be a sparkly vampire morpheus being all agnsty and cruising chicks -
YES.
I don't even mind moving it to the States or wherever as long as Constantine remains snarky and English. -
I don't suppose anyone involved in this production, from producers to studio VPs realize that if they would just create a straight adaptation, with no bullshit studio "improvements" that this could be the most successful TV show since The Sopranos. Season DVD Sets would sell forever. But alas, it will be packaged as Twilight Lite in an attempt to sell to junior high school kids and eventually shit its way over to TNT's early morning lineup (where I don't need to tell you...they know drama).
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It sounds like Sandman stalled in development at HBO, but if Kripke (or whoever) creates a strong adaptation, it could potentially end up anywhere, including Starz, Showtime or HBO.
As the headline suggests, I think WBTV is likely eyeing this as a “Smallville” replacement, but …
Keep in mind WBTV makes “Life and Times Of Tim” for HBO, “The Closer” for TNT, “Fringe” and “Human Target” for Fox, “The Mentalist” and “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men” for CBS, “V” and “The Middle” for ABC, and “Chuck” and “Undercovers” for NBC, in addition to “Vampire Diaries,” “Smallville,” “One Tree Hill,” “Supernatural,” “Gossip Girl,” “Hellcats” and “Nikita” for The CW.
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If a Sandman series can't be on a pay cable channel, I would accept it on FX since they're not afraid to get their hands dirty. Any other network, just dump the project now.
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If Sandman ends up on the CW they'll tone it down for the kiddie crowd. Dream and Death will be in their early twenties but act like kids in high school. Sandman belongs on HBO but I said that about Watchmen and look the WB ended up doing with that.
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you cant adapt regardless of your talent or the budget you have.these are artworks which define their medium which are made in.
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TV and movies are the wrong medium for the stories told in Sandman and Watchmen itself.
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He is sexually frustrated, has zits, and can't fucking BELIEVE his only powers are breathing under water and "aquatic telepathy". Ugh!
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Fuck you for thinking it.
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If this kills that proposed shitty-ass Jaime Reyes live-action Blue Beetle series then I am all for it. Fuck Jaime Reyes.
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I know you'll turn on me at some point, but on this point I'll take any support I can get.
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Just too, too sacred to fuck up.
Fuck up Watchmen. Or Preacher. Star Wars has been ass raped. But not this. -
He can withstand the crushing depths of deep sea pressures, which would put his strength level at at least 100 times human (not nearly as strong as superman whose about a million times human!).
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I wanted to do this! I even broached the subject once to various people years ago. I guess it's time to hash out a spec script, and pray I can get on the writing staff. For the record, I would definitely want to transplant the stories as close to as they are now to the TV screen.
Argh. -
But i was hoping for a feature length film based on the season of mists. I loved the idea that Satan was tired of his "job" and was auctioncing the key to hell and the final outcome to that story was awesome. The Devil chillin on a beach somwhere with a cocktail was great too. A tv series could work in a twilight zone kinda way but with ya know, Dream as a main character (obviously)
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i wish that guy was a sandman fan holding hosteges at cw's offices...instead of having ish's with that ho kate and the 8 crotchfruit
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Put on the cape, Tom, and you're set for ten more years.
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doom patrol. the runaways(marvel), iron fist, moon knight and deadpool
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The Runaways would be perfect. It was very well respected but it isn't a "stuck in amber" type of comic, so they can get away with some changes. They can cast teens (to fit in on the CW), they write off characters from the show, they can have cameos have more established marvel heroes/villains, they have at least 3 seasons worth of story arcs they can use and no one would be that offended if some details were changed.
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If they put it on Fox, they could use their connections to the x-men.
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Sep 04, 2010 6:05:06 PM CDT
I thought they were spining-off.................................
by axcel1
Phil Moriss' character, The Martian Manhunter/John Jones. I would like see that.
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they're casting now. The guy behind 'Nick and Nora' is directing. I really think Sandman would only work as an adult animated series.
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