The new James Bond film, "Skyfall," is set to open in U.S. theaters tomorrow and if it's as good as I hear it is than director Sam Mendes is about to become one of the most sought after directors in Hollywood. During an interview with
Collider Mendes discusses one of his projects that never got off the ground, the adaptation of DC Comic's "Preacher." He says that "Skyfall" has fulfilled his interest in tackling an action movie, so don't expect him to take another crack at a "Preacher" film.
Almost seems strange that a director like Sam Mendes, that pulled off the impossible, by making what most consider the best Bond film ever had such a difficult time adapting "Preacher." As you will hear in the video below he had to walk away from the project because he just couldn't figure out way to make it work on screen.
"It’s a brilliant graphic novel, I loved it, but a lot of it takes place in the real world and we’re surrounded now by fantasy and superhero genre pictures which are full of eye candy. And actually, Preacher is much more real world, it’s more of a Southern Gothic with elements of the fantastic in it; it’s a quite difficult thing to balance."
“If you look at somewhere between Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead, True Blood—that world of real but fantasy, the two mixed, it’s young and sexy and it’s got many, many chapters. Actually when I saw that it was a possible HBO or a possible cable show, I thought ‘that’s a great way to do it,’ because then you can let it develop gradually, because there’s also a huge amount of it.”
Preacher tells the story of Jesse Custer, a preacher in the small Texas town of Annville. Custer was accidentally possessed by the supernatural creature named Genesis in an incident which killed his entire congregation and flattened his church.
Genesis, the product of the unauthorized, unnatural coupling of an angel and a demon, is an infant with no sense of individual will. However, as it is composed of both pure goodness and pure evil, it might have enough power to rival that of God Himself. In other words, Jesse Custer, bonded to Genesis, may have become the most powerful being in the whole of living existence.
Custer, driven by a strong sense of right and wrong, goes on a journey across the United States attempting to (literally) find God, who abandoned Heaven the moment Genesis was born. He also begins to discover the truth about his new powers. They allow him, when he wills it, to command the obedience of those who hear and comprehend his words. He is joined by his old girlfriend Tulip O'Hare, as well as a hard-drinking Irish vampire named Cassidy.