Even though we have been waiting since the series first blew open the comics world, it looks like it is really going to happen now.

David Goyer, the Producer of the upcoming Sandman film adaptation, is now stating with confidence that Sandman will be heading to celluloid at some point in 2016.  The film has been championed by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is rumored to be both directing and starring, has helped to get it through development hell and this point in production.  Now that the project has been moved over to New Line along with all of the other Vertigo Warner Bros. projects, it looks like it is going to be hitting a real pre-production schedule.

Goyer told Collider in a recent interview:

We’re just about to do a new draft. All of the Vertigo properties ported over to New Line a few months ago. There was a decision from the higher-ups that New Line would focus on the Vertigo properties and Warner Bros would focus on the DC properties. So we’re just starting a re-write with a really fantastic writer that fans of your site will enjoy that’s coming aboard, but I can’t quite announce it yet.

I think that the Vertigo properties are a bit more quirky and off-center than kind of the mainstream superhero stuff at Warners. But I understand the decision because we’re not having to fight for release dates with the Vertigo stuff like we would have been having to do over at Warner Bros. But I feel confident that film will go into production hopefully next year.

Now we have a lot left to learn about the film, but it looks like there is a certain amount of confidence in the team and their ability to release the project.  There has been some rhetoric about Sandman having an “action movie” feel, but this was said off hand and noted that it certainly wouldn’t be a “conventional” action film.  What will cement this is if we start to see a visual style and hard fantasy presentation that made the books the treasures that keep being read and read as the years go by.