Perfect timing! I finally finished reading the entire Preacher series last week after having been stuck at the two-thirds mark for months and here we have an update from the director of the film adaptation giving an update on the status of the film.
It sounds like the project is almost there – it’s so close, I can feel it. Preacher has been in development hell for a very long time (a decade now) and you can read my previous posts on the history of Preacher to find out how it was supposed to come at us in the form of an HBO series, which it would do for perfectly during these times.
In talking to Empire, Mendes revealed that he has read a complete draft of the script and he hinted that the movie may not be too far away.
“It’s getting closer… I’ve seen a script and it’s very good. We’re a little further down the road than when I last spoke to you.”
I imagine we’re still years away sadly but Mendes seems truely passionate about the project.
“I love graphic novels – Road To Perdition was based on graphic novel – so I’m used to that form and Preacher is absolutely brilliant. I certainly feel it’s a movie.”
“It’s funny, it’s violent as hell, it’s extremely blasphemous and profane, but it has an amazingly skilful tone… I met Garth Ennis and I’m just a huge fan of it.”
Preacher, the successful mid-nineties Vertigo comic series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, tells the story of Reverend Jesse Custer who unwittingly becomes host to an angel-demon hybrid entity known as Genesis. Due to the entity’s split-nature of pure good and evil, Genesis is powerful enough to rival God himself. The plots follows Custer on his adventure discovering who he is and what he can do as he hunts down God who abandoned Heaven as Genesis was born. Joining Custer on the trip we have Tulip O’Hare, his old lady-friend, and Cassidy, the fan-favorite Irish vampire who loves the booze.
The problem with a film adaptation is telling a complete story in two hours. The entire series can’t be done in one movie so I don’t know how they’ll be able to make a full movie with beginning, middle and strong ending without concluding the story. Luckily, Mendes realizes this and said it was way too much for the writer, John August, to put into one script.
Hopefully, we’ll get a trilogy or franchise of films out of this. It’d be great if they could get the studio backing and an amazing cast that they’d have enough faith in to make all three at once (a la Lord of the Rings trilogy) and that way they could set up and create the complete story all at once and have them come out not too far apart.
Unfortunately for those of us dying to see this project come to fruition, in June Sam Mendes signed a deal with Focus Features for two years that includes a pair of projects that’ll keep him busy for a bit and according to the Empire report, his next task is helming a movie titled Netherland based on a Christopher Hampton script.
Are you excited to see Preacher on the big screen?
Screen Rant will let you know as soon as we hear anything more on this project.
Source: Empire
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