'The Sandman' Movie: Joseph Gordon-Levitt Discusses the Challenges with Making Film

Rome was not built in a day, and neither will Neil Gaiman's movie adaptation for the comic book series "The Sandman."

American actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt will be directing the movie, which he promised would remain pretty loyal to the book. Meanwhile, Jack Thorne will be writing the screenplay.

Gordon-Levitt said that they are working on things slowly but surely, and they are being careful with how they are treating the material since it is not "an obvious adaptation."

But speaking to IGN, the actor turned director revealed the challenges they are encountering with the film: "Each issue is 24 pages and it's written that way - as a serial, kind of more episodic thing. If you examine it from the broad strokes, there is sort of a beginning, middle, and end, but it was written in such this episodic way."

A lot of comic books have been turned into movies, but Gordon-Levitt explains that what they are doing with "The Sandman" is actually pretty different.

"It's not like adapting a graphic novel. Like 'Watchmen' is a book, but this isn't that, so it really takes quite a bit of creativity and ingenuity to figure out, okay, how can we take all these kind of disparate episodes and make them congeal into a movie - a feature film that's got a beginning, middle, and end?" he said.

There is one thing that Gordon-Levitt is certain about the movie though, and that is the fact that it will not be one huge action flick.

"Big spectacular action movies are generally about crime fighters fighting crime and blowing shit up. This has nothing to do with that," he earlier said.

That was one of the requests he received from "The Sandman" creator Neil Gaiman, said Gordon-Levitt. Gaiman stressed that despite his powers, Morpheus does not punch anybody.

"It was actually one of the things that Neil Gaiman said to me, he said 'Don't have any punching.' Because he never does," he shared. "If you read the comics, Morpheus doesn't punch anybody. That's not what he does."

There is no word yet who will play Morpheus, but Gaiman himself wants either British actors Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) or Tom Hiddleston (Thor) to take on the role. There was one time Johnny Depp would have been perfect for the role too, said Gaiman, but now he's unfortunately too old to be Morpheus. But Gaiman is keeping his options open.

"The truth is, as far as I'm concerned, anybody who sounds English with great cheekbones can probably pull it off," he said.