Late last year it was rumoured that This Is the End duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were linking up with Breaking Bad producer Sam Catlin to develop an adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s classic comic book series Preacher, and with the project now officially a go at Sony TV and AMC, screenwriter Goldberg has spoken about their plans during an interview with Collider.
“We just had a meeting with AMC and Garth Ennis, who’s the writer, and we all kind of seemed to agree that we’re gonna stay as true to the comic as we can. We need to change some stuff but we’re not gonna change much, I hope. We’re just gonna do a little more of the preamble instead of doing flashbacks and restructure how we dole out the information a little, but we’re gonna [do the] same characters, same story, same ending. We’re gonna try to stick to Preacher as best we can. We’re making it with Sam Catlin who did Breaking Bad, and so he might tell me I’m wrong about all of this and that the real way to do it is different because he’s much smarter and better at all this than I am. But we’re gonna try to stick to what it is as best we can.”
Goldberg then went on to explain why he feels a TV adaptation is the best approach for the property, as opposed to the numerous feature film adaptations that have failed to get off the ground over the years stating that, “We’re beyond excited, we’ve tried to make it for 10 years. The big difference is everyone else tried to make it a movie and it shouldn’t be a movie. It should be an AMC show, that’s the proper way for it to get done… It’s too big; you can’t do that in a movie. It’s just too big. You’ve gotta learn the characters, it’s all about a love triangle and you need to grow with them and see the woman swayed one way or the other, and in a movie you just can’t accomplish all that.”
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Originally published March 10, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.