Neil Gaiman

'Children really do love murder," says Neil Gaiman, the prolific author behind the "Sandman" graphic novels and, recently, the films "Stardust" (adapted from his novel) and "Beowulf" (sharing writing credit with Roger Avary). Gaiman's stories are dark, yet even he was surprised when he stumbled into a junk shop and picked up a worn puppeteer's autobiography with a synopsis of Mr. Punch, the hook-nosed star of countless kiddie shows.

In the world of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the storied comic-book series he wrote from 1988 to 1996, there lies a library filled with books their authors only dreamed of writing. If Gaiman were crafting the dream king's domain today, he might well add a multiplex to show all the movies he's never made. In the last 16 years, Gaiman has watched more than a dozen of his comics, stories and novels languish in Hollywood's often dark maze of development without a single one making its way to the screen.

Even in casual conversation, British author Neil Gaiman sometimes sounds as if he's narrating some dark fairy tale -- his sentences slither across old stone floors or flit on gossamer wings. He also happens to live in a rambling Minnesota manse that looks, Gaiman says, as if it were "drawn by Charles Addams on a day he was feeling particularly morbid." So it's no surprise that fans of the fantasy novelist have whispered for years that Gaiman bears more than a passing resemblance to his signature creation, the Sandman, the spooky comic-book character that debuted 20 years ago and brought a new literary ambition to the pop medium.

As averse as the studios are to relinquishing control, when the vision is big and the budget is small, as it was on "MirrorMask," giving the filmmakers creative authority was the only way to get things done. Motivated by the success on DVD of the late Jim Henson's fantasy films "The Dark Crystal" and "Labyrinth," Sony Pictures in 2002 approached the Jim Henson Co. to produce something similar.