When it was announced a few months ago that my favorite comic series, Preacher, was finally being adapted to the small screen; I had mixed feelings. It was going to be going to AMC instead of cable, and it was being written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Sam Catlin (Breaking Bad). Now that last part actually has me a bit excited. The three of them all have stellar credits behind them, it’s just that to see that story edited down and probably manipulated got me a little scared. I’ve had some time to come to terms with it, because ultimately, I’m seeing Jesse Custer and his colorful band of misfits come to life.
In a recent conversation with Goldberg and producer James Weaver, Steve from Collider got some information on what to expect from the specific look from the show.
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EVAN GOLDBERG: We have not had “look” conversations with them yet. Garth Ennis and Neal Moritz are involved and Sam Catlin, who did Breaking Bad, is doing it with us, and AMC and all of us are just talking about the three main characters right now. We’re not talking about the visuals whatsoever. We all agree it’s a story about three characters, and we need to crack that for television, and we’ve been meeting with Sam to try and get that done. But there have been no visual conversations yet, but I imagine it will lean heavily on the fact that it is a Southern American, Texas-based story for the large potion of it. And when you chat with Garth, it’s clear that cowboy movies were a massive influence, so I feel like we’ll probably derive some of our look from that. But we also want to be as original as possible. We definitely haven’t gotten into the visual part of the conversation yet
JAMES WEAVER: We definitely set it up with AMC though that it needs to be an epic sort of series. You’re going to have to be smart in terms of how you contain certain kinds of things, but at the end of the day the comic goes where the comic goes. The comic goes to all of these places and you have to represent that stuff too.
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Goldberg went on to talk about how much Weaver and him will be a part of the show, as he has a pretty full plate with movies like
The Interview and X-Mas coming out later this year.
[box_light]GOLDBERG: We won’t be there 100% of the time I imagine, but you never know because we are obsessed with this project, and Seth and I—much of what we are is because of Preacher. It came out as we were ascending in our writing abilities, so Garth Ennis is a massive influence on us, so essentially we’re getting to make the thing from the guy who made us who we are in our opinion. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we get caught up and don’t want to leave ever, but our initial plan is to make sure it’s an “us” thing and it has our influence and we direct a bunch of them, but I don’t know if we’ll be there all day, every day. We’ll see.[/box_light]
With Breaking Bad gone and Mad Men ending next year, they have a big whole that needs to be filled at AMC. It’s one of the reasons that the producers went to that network to get Preacher made.
[box_light]WEAVER: It feels like that moment HBO was in after The Sopranos where The Sopranos is finished, and they’re looking around and saying, “What’s the next thing that’s going to be our big deal at the network?” And I think they’re hoping against all hope that it’s this thing; this tentpole thing they can pair up with The Walking Dead. So they couldn’t be more supportive and awesome. We actually made a pretty specific choice that they were the right home for this, so we’re definitely hopeful that they’re going to be supportive and behind, to be blunt, the craziest version of this because that’s the only thing that’s going to work[/box_light]
Finally, Seth Rogen talked about how they want to make sure that the comic is its own entity, and though they are early in the writing process, they want comic fans to still get into the show.
[box_light]”Me and Evan are writing it write now with the help of Sam Catlin and we’ve come up with a lot of incredibly crazy ideas. [Laughs] It’s a fun thing to riff on and talk about. We’re definitely trying to expand on some of the ideas in the comic and make it that…we love most of the main cornerstones of the comic but we’re trying to make it that even if you’ve read the comic you should not know exactly what to expect from the TV show.”[/box_light]
As more news develops on Preacher, be sure to Stay Tuned to DFAT for what comes out!
~Chaz
