Sam Mendes does Preacher

Posted by Donnie in Movies.

Has Christmas come early? No, I’m not talking about the Phillies winning the World Series, I’m talking about the director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition adapting the Vertigo/DC comic book series for the big screen.

Preacher was a 75-issue comic book series which ran from 1995-2000, created by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. Jesse Custer, a small town Texas preacher, becomes possessed by a supernatural creature and kills his entire congregation. He then begins a journey to find God (literally) along with his girlfriend Tulip and his drunkard Irish Vampire friend Cassidy. On their journey they encounter many things including fallen angels, guardians of Jesus’ bloodline, the Angel of Death, serial killers and Jesse’s redneck Cajun family. Quite possibly the most disturbing character is Arseface, a teenager so obsessed with Kurt Cobain that he attempted to kill himself just like his idol, only to end up collapsing the lower half of his face. Needless to say, he slobbers a lot and can only mumble when talking. This series is not for the squeamish; it takes shots at everything from the south to the U.S. government to religion to ….well, it takes lots of shots at the whole culture of religion.

Up until a few months ago, HBO had its sites on turning this into a series with James Marsden (Cyclops from the X-Men trilogy) in the Preacher role. While HBO would have been an absolute perfect fit alongside previous and current series like Carnivale and True Blood, it languished in development hell until dropped and then Sam decides to defrost this ol’ cajun heart. Thanks Sam. Let’s just hope it actually gets made with all it’s brutal darkness and glorious religious obsenity.

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