Neil Gaiman's original comic book "The Sandman" is heading to the big screen. However, delays have hit its development and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who serves as the producer and director of the film, with the help of David Goyer, Warner Bros. and Gaiman himself, has revealed the different challenges he and his team are encountering to ensure the faithful interpretation of the comics.

In an interview with IGN, Gordon-Levitt admitted that the delay was caused by the difficulty in developing a complete screenplay for the series. He explained that the way the comics were written did not make it easy for screenwriters to come up with a complete story.

"Each issue is 24 pages and it's written that way. As a serial, kind of more episodic thing. If you examine it from the broad strokes, there is sort of a beginning, middle and end, but it was written in such this episodic way," the actor said.

He added that the "serial nature" of the comics is different than any graphic novel, whose story follows like that of one book.

Gordon-Levitt also said that the challenge lies in bringing all the "disparate episodes" together to form one story and turn it into a "feature film that's got a beginning, middle and end."

The "Sandman" series began in 1989 and with numerous stories and characters to sift through, the actor and his writers do have a huge task ahead of them. It means that they check which among the plots and characters must be kept in the movie and which can be removed without affecting its final story.

The huge hurdle had already presented itself when numerous productions attempted to write a screenplay for the Neil Gaiman original in the past, which turned out to be unsuccessful.

The "500 Days of Summer" actor shared that the English author has had to read so many screenplays and it was not close in any way to what he had in mind.

While Gordon-Levitt did not give a timeline for when the movie will begin shooting, he shared that his team is already doing the groundwork to get the ball rolling.

"We're working on it! I'm excited about it," said Gordon-Levitt. "I think it coud be really, really good."

But what else can fans expect from the film?

While speaking to MTV, Gordon-Levitt revealed what moviegoers won't be seeing in the much-awaited movie.

"Big spectacular action movies are generally about crime fighters fighting crime and blowing sh-t up. This has nothing to do with that," the actor said. "And it was actually one of the things that Neil Gaiman said to me, he said 'Don't have any punching.' Because he never does. If you read the comics, Morpheus doesn't punch anybody. That's not what he does."