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Some Fans Call For Legal Consequences for Neil Gaiman Over Leaking 'The Sandman' Script

Some Fans Call For Legal Consequences for Neil Gaiman Over Leaking 'The Sandman' Script
Image credit: Legion-Media

Neil Gaiman doesn't like bad adaptations – up to a point of leaking a script if he hates it enough.

Netfix's adaptation of 'The Sandman ' is not the first time when Neil Gaiman 's iconic graphic novel is being brought to screen. Before the 2022 show, there were several attempts to adapt 'The Sandman', but, according to Neil Gaiman himself, neither of them satisfied him enough to give them a go.

But this week, a surprising detail has emerged – it turns out that Jon Peters once offered his idea of an adaptation, and Gaiman hated it so much he… leaked the script to the press, effectively sabotaging the movie.

"It was the worst script that I've ever read by anybody," the author mercilessly said in an interview with Rolling Stone. "There was nothing in there I loved. There was nothing in there I liked. It was the worst script that I've ever read by anybody."

Among the ideas offered in the script, according to Gaiman, was the suggestion to make Dream, Lucifer and Corinthian identical triplets engaged in a race to see who could get the ruby, the helm, and the sand before midnight in 1999.

But, no matter how bad one might deem Peters' ideas, Gaiman's move to ruin the movie was deemed over-the-top by many social media users. Some of them even expressed hope that Gaiman would face legal consequences over doing so – something that the author was quick to address on his Twitter account.

"I believe the statute of limitations on leaking dire scripts of Sandman films that were never made 25 years ago has run out by now. But if they come to arrest me I will wear my shackles with pride," Gaiman wrote.

Many fans rose up to defend the author.

"That's a very weird flex, wishing that the creator of a property would be penalized from protecting it from a guy desperate to put monster spider toys in every comic book property he touched. It's not really the values of someone who loves The Sandman, either." – @GoKartMedia

Despite the controversy around Gaiman's witty move to sabotage the Jon Peters adaptations, it seems that in the end, things have turned out to go quite well. 'The Sandman' has received a perfect adaptation – at least that's what both Gaiman and his fans are saying – and it is doing great in terms of viewing figures, standing at Netflix 's #1 for three weeks straight.