AMC Officially Announces ‘Preacher’ TV Series
After years of rumors, speculation, and various stages of development hell, today AMC confirmed that the network will be adapting Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's Preacher to television. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are attached as executive producers, along with Sam Caitlin (Breaking Bad), who will serve as showrunner. The duo will also write the pilot.
"This is amazing," said Rogen and Goldberg in a joint statement through AMC. “We’ve tried for seven years to work on ‘Preacher’ and we’re so psyched AMC is finally letting us. It is our favorite comic of all time, and we’re going to do everything we can to do it right. Humperdoo!”
Ennis also released a statement, on behalf of himself and Dillon, in support of the announcement:
Steve Dillon and I are very happy to see ‘Preacher’ being developed for TV, which seems a much more natural home for the story than a 2-hour movie. Between them, Sony TV and AMC have brought viewers two of my favorite shows with ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Mad Men,’ and it’s exactly that kind of creative commitment and courage that ‘Preacher’ needs.
Obviously it’s taken a while, but Ken Levin along with Neal Moritz and his team refused to give up, long after the point when I myself grew skeptical, and their unrelenting enthusiasm for the project has gotten us where we need to be. I’m particularly impressed that Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Sam Catlin understand ‘Preacher’ fully — meaning they get it for what it is, not some vague approximation.
All in all, it looks like ‘Preacher’ can now be brought to TV in a way that I’d previously not have thought possible, and I very much appreciate that Steve and I have been included in the conversation in the way that we have.
Thirteen years after its conclusion, Preacher remains one of the most popular series in Vertigo's cannon, as well as one of the more controversial. The series stars Jesse Custer, a disillusioned Texas preacher whose body is suddenly and violently inhabited by the spirit of a child born of the union of an angel and a demon. The spirit presences gives Jesse "the word," a gift that allows him to force anyone to do exactly as he says. Along with his girlfriend Tulip, an expert marksman, and best friend/vampire Cassidy, Jesse goes on a mission to, quite literally, find God, who has abandoned his throne in heaven and is on earth, running from both Jesse as well as his past mistakes.
Running for 66 issues from 1995 until 2000, the series is one of the most violent ever published under the auspices of DC Comics, as well as one of the more endearingly popular comic series of the last 20 years. Many Preacher readers have felt for years that the series was ideal for adaptation to the small screen. Indeed, perhaps no comic in recent memory has been more widely passionately called for to be made into a television show.
And now fans have their wish.
[Via ScreenCrush]