According to billboard.com, The Sandman’s creator Neil Gaiman was recently on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he spoke about Michael Jackson wanting to star in a TV adaptation of the comic book series in the 1990s. He stated, “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, ‘Ooh.’” Over the years, Gaiman has gotten a number of offers to adapt his series for TV. This year, the first season of The Sandman launched on Netflix and topping the service’s global chart for three weeks straight. Morpheus is portrayed by Tom Sturridge in the 2022 version. Jackson never got the chance to play Morpheus, however, before his death in 2009 he did play the Scarecrow in 1978’s The Wiz, and also appeared in films including Moonwalker and Men in Black II.
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