Devin Faraci broke the news that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been circling a movie based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics last month. Now, it's official. Or at least partially official.

The report hedges some of its bets, suggesting Joseph Gordon-Levitt may both star in and direct an adaptation, but on Twitter the actor said he’s signed only as a producer and “the rest remains to be seen.” David S. Goyer (Blade, Man Of Steel) is the screenwriter. Gordon-Levitt also tweeted that Gaiman is involved with the project in some capacity.

David Goyer makes me nervous. The best superhero movies he's ever done have all had exceptional directors. When he's left to his own devices, he tends to make generic movie product. Gordon-Levitt could probably pull the acting part off, but while I liked his directing debut in Don Jon a great deal, he's not done anything to convince me he could control what will inevitably be a monster of a CGI-heavy movie. Gaiman's inclusion in the project is obviously welcome, but it isn't a guarantee that the thing will get made; Gaiman's been involved with lots of Hollywood projects that get buried by their own spinning wheels.

But this isn't even a question of "can." It's more a question of "should." Is adapting Sandman a good idea? Faraci believes Sandman would be better-suited as a TV series, admitting that "I just don't get the property as a movie, as the best Sandman stories are rarely the ones that feature Morpheus in the lead." And there's also the problem of the time that's passed since Sandman came out. I haven't re-read Sandman for quite a long time. I'm kind of afraid of re-approaching the book and finding out that it's not as good as I remembered it back in my teens and early twenties. The goth aesthetic that ruled over the book's early days is now entirely played-out. And Gaiman books seem to be difficult to adapt. Stardust didn't get it quite right, the Neverwhere TV series was awful, and people have been trying and failing to adapt American Gods for years now, although the stop-motion adaptation of Coraline was magnificent. I just have a hard time seeing how a two-hour Sandman movie could be anything but disappointing. But what about you?