The streaming release of The Sandman has been a success for Netflix, and that’s good news for original author Neil Gaiman. As someone who was very involved with the series, part of the reason that The Sandman has taken so long to get a proper live-action adaptation is that Gaiman wanted to be sure that everything about it was just right. That’s why one pitch that came to Gaiman in the 1990s did not materialize, even with the potential involvement of one of the world’s most popular celebrities.

Recently, Gaiman appeared as a guest for an interview with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. As Gaiman explains, he was approached in 1996 with a pitch for a Sandman adaptation featuring chart-topping singer Michael Jackson in the role of Morpheus, the lead character played by Tom Surridge in the Netflix series.

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“By 1996, I was being taken to Warners, where the then-president of Warner Bros. sat me down and told me that Michael Jackson had phoned him the day before, and asked him if he could star as Morpheus in The Sandman. So there was a lot of interest in this, and they knew that it was one of the Crown Jewels, and what did I think? And I was like… (unenthused grunt)."

Though Jackson did have acting experience, it would seem that he still wasn’t right for what Gaiman had in mind for a live-action Morpheus. It’s also not the only time Jackson had reportedly campaigned for a major role in a feature film that he wasn’t able to land. There have been reports of Jackson looking to buy Marvel in the late 1990s with the hopes of personally playing Peter Parker. For better or for worse, those negotiations fell through, and Spidey was later brought to life by Tobey Maguire and director Sam Raimi.

The Sandman Has Been a Success for Netflix

     Netflix

The Sandman pulled in high viewership and mostly positive ratings when it premiered on Netflix earlier this month. At this time, however, an official renewal order has not yet come in, even with this success in mind. Gaiman has tweeted that The Sandman is a particularly expensive series to produce and that this is holding up progress on a second season getting a greenlight.

“Because Sandman is a really expensive show,” Gaiman said of the holdup. “And for Netflix to release the money to let us make another season we have to perform incredibly well. So yes, we’ve been the top show in the world for the last two weeks. That still may not be enough.”

You can find The Sandman streaming on Netflix.