Gordon-Levitt: Sandman's complicated

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has admitted that working on the movie version of Sandman is a "complicated adaptation".

The 34-year-old actor is currently helping to craft a big screen version of Neil Gaiman's comic series with screenwriter David Goyer and Warner Bros. But even with numerous editions as a point of reference, Joseph confessed it's not an easy process.

"It's really good, man. It's slow but steady," he told MTV News. "It's a really complicated adaptation because those comics, they're brilliant. But they're not written as a whole. It's not like Watchmen, which is a graphic novel that has a beginning, middle, and end.

"Sandman was written over the course of whatever -- I forget exactly, six or seven years. One at a time. One little 20-page issue at a time. And to try to take that and make it into something that's a feature film -- a movie that has a beginning, middle, and end -- is complicated."

The comic's writer is helping the team with their film version. And Joseph revealed that Neil insisted one character trait remain true to the original text.

"Big spectacular action movies are generally about crime fighters fighting crime and blowing sh*t up. This has nothing to do with that," he explained. "And it was actually one of the things that Neil Gaiman said to me, he said 'Don't have any punching.' Because he never does. If you read the comics, Morpheus doesn't punch anybody. That's not what he does."

Comic books have been a great source of material to film makers in recent years, with the Avengers and Spiderman making numerous outings on the silver screen. But Joseph is hopeful that the final version of Sandman will offer audiences something a little different in the genre.

"It's going to be like a grand spectacular action film, but that relies on none of those same old ordinary clichés," he added. "So, that's why it's taking a lot time to write, but it's going to be really good."

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