Sam Mendes Gives Brief Update On ‘Preacher’

The last we heard about the Preacher film project was from last October when Sam Mendes (American Beauty) was signed on to direct the project. At the time, it seemed we may actually be getting some forward movement on the movie but we’ve not heard anything since… until now with this little interview.

Preacher is based on the successful mid-nineties Vertigo comic series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon and it was set to start development on becoming a feature film back in 1998. After years of not getting it done, it was later set to become an HBO series in 2006 which of course fell through after some management changes led to a desire to avoid the controversial content. Now, it is again to become a film. The project has been in development hell for over a decade now but I’m confident that it’s finally on the right track and what perfect timing since we’re in the era of comic-book movies.

Coming Soon had a very brief chat with the director where it was asked about the current state of development with John August writing the script. Mendes wasn’t very specific but he had this to say:

“I think it’s an incredible piece of material and I’m very hopeful about John’s script, so let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

Next, Coming Soon asked him about how the 66-issue series (not including the specials) would be covered in one (or more) movie(s):

“Oh, he wouldn’t do the entire series in one movie. It would be impossible to do all nine volumes in one movie, that would be one long movie, and it wouldn’t do justice of it. It will not attempt to do all of it, but there’s so much wonderful stuff that I wouldn’t know what to leave out.”

That’s a big relief. It’s impossible in my mind to do the story and characters justice in one feature film, let alone all of the important stories. This means we’ll hopefully be getting a series of films to tell the story.

If you’re not familiar with the comic, Preacher 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.

I’m currently reading the series (about two-thirds through it now) and while it’s probably the most extreme book I’ve ever read, I think it would make for a wildly entertaining on-screen experience. It’s a real shame it didn’t work for HBO because that would certainly be the best platform to tell the entire story episodically.

What do you think about Preacher and how it could be split up amongst several films?

For fun, tell us who you’d like to play the key characters. James Marsden was long set to play the lead, Jesse Custer, back in the day – Is he still a possible candidate?

Screen Rant will give you more Preacher news as it comes.

Source: Coming Soon, Image edited from a DC Comics Wallpaper