Sandman movie: Plot and production update; actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt compares film to other superhero movies

Fans who are eagerly waiting to see the live action adaptation of the cult comic book series Sandman, will be pleased to know that the makers are hard at work to make sure the film does justice to the source material.

Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt recently spoke about the challenges involved in adapting the long-running comic book series into one major motion picture.

"Each issue is 24 pages and it's written that way. As a serial, kind of more episodic thing," Gordon-Levitt told MTV. "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."

"It's not like adapting a graphic novel. Like Watchmen is a book. 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," the actor explained.

Talking about the film's overall treatment in general, the Dark Knight Rises actor revealed that as compared to most comic book/ superhero movies, Sandman will not have a lot of crime fighting or punching.

"Big spectacular action movies are generally about crime fighters fighting crime and blowing sh-t up. This has nothing to do with that."

Gordon-Levitt continued, "...And it was actually one of the things that Neil Gaiman [the creator of Sandman comics] said to me, he said 'Don't have any punching.' Because he never does. If you read the comics, Morpheus [main character] doesn't punch anybody. That's not what he does. It's going to be like a grand spectacular action film, but that relies on none of those same old ordinary clichés. So, that's why it's taking a lot time to write, but it's going to be really good."