Sam Mendes: Preacher Man

   

October 29, 2008 - Road to Perdition director Sam Mendes is returning to graphic novel medium for the source material to his next movie.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mendes will direct a feature film version of the Vertigo comic book title Preacher, created by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. The project is set up at Columbia Pictures and will be produced by Neal Moritz (The Fast and the Furious, Stealth) via his Original Films banner. Moritz is also producing The Green Hornet.

As THR reminds us, the story follows Jesse Custer who has been granted "immense powers [and] teamed with an old girlfriend and a hard-drinking Irish vampire and set out on a journey across America to find God -- who apparently had abandoned his duties in heaven -- and hold him accountable for his negligence."

The project has been languishing in development for years. A feature film version was in the works years ago with James Marsden attached to star and Kevin Smith producing. More recently, HBO tried to turn it into a series courtesy of Ghost Rider writer-director Mark Steven Johnson.

For those of you that were not priviliged enough to read any of Preacher, now will be your chance to experience the Arseface. Mendes does fantastic adaptations and I'm sure this will not disappoint.

For anyone that doesn't know who this is, Sam Mendes is the director of American Beauty, Road to Perdition and Jarhead. Road to Perdition was also a comic book originally and Mendes did a spectacular job adapting it for the big screen.

HBO seriously screwed up by not making this a series. Preacher was meant to be a recurring series. Too much story there. I don't see how they will turn it into a decent film.

You must not have seen Ghost Rider.

They can turn it into a movie. It's just a matter of condensing. Every villain isn't making it in. As long as it ends up as Jesse vs. Cassidy i'll be happy. Oh and the Saint of Killers needs to be there too.

good luck if they can finally fucking do something with it.....

Huh. I read the first one and quite liked it. I agree that it would be better as a series.

What I really want though is a Fable series. eh? eh?

All comics should be series. It's just not possible though. I'll take a movie by Sam Mendes over a series by the Ghost Ride guy any day.

Oh and I would cream myself if Fables became a series. Y the last Man also.

And Arseface. And Whats-his-face (the main baddie who's chasing Jesse the entire time). And then you need to explain the whole "God" thing going on in the series. Which leads you to introducing a few of the angels and how Saint of Killers came about...

It's too much for a movie, I tell ya. They'll either have to sacrifice great parts of the story or omit key characters to make this thing work, which will ruin part of what made Preacher great.