At AMC's portion of the Winter TCA press tour, Preacher executive producers Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Sam Catlin reassured the press in attendance that the show won't be the typical Rogen comedy project. "We’ve chosen not to do stupid stuff for a while. Like the stuff we normally do."
Rogen went on to add, "Many people more talented than us tried to turn this into a movie. I don’t think you could translate the comics directly to television. I think everyone involved thought we should not, including [co-creator] Garth [Ennis]."
Preacher is currently without a specific premiere date but AMC has confirmed that the show will debut in 2016.
In the late '90s, Garth Ennis wrote a film script based largely on the first arc of Preacher and teamed with Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier to shop the project around Hollywood. Rachel Talalay, who directed Tank Girl, was going to direct. The project was initially set up at Miramax but never progressed beyond the initial development stage.
By 2001, the project moved to UK-based Storm Entertainment and the film was scheduled to start filming in November. However, concerns over the film's $25 million dollar budget prevented filming from actually starting. James Marsden was attached to play Jessie Custer. Ultimately, this project never progressed and by 2006, Preacher was set up at HBO as a TV series.
Mark Steven Johnson was slated to write the pilot script with Howard Deutch serving as director. By 2008, a shift at the executive level of HBO resulted in the project being abandoned.
Columbia Pictures then purchased the film rights and hired Sam Mendes to direct. Mendes eventually dropped out to direct Skyfall and gave way to DJ Caruso, who stated that he wanted Chris Pine to play Jessie, Alex Pettyfer to play the Saint of Killers and Shia LaBeouf to play Arseface. This adaptation also stalled and by 2013, AMC owned the rights and began development with Rogen, Catlin and Goldberg as executive producers.
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