Seth Rogen is rumoured to be penning the television series adaptation of the comic series Preacher.
I don't think it's going to happen. At least not a proper adaptation. Why? Well, to put it bluntly, it's quite vulgar, rude, crude, violent, mean, in-your-face and pretty damning of the whole 'religion' business. Heads are blown open, every bodily fluid is seen in excess, it deals with some heavy themes and is uncompromising in showing everything in gross detail. It's the sort of material that wouldn't make it to the screen.
So, after I've done the hard sell, you're probably wondering what it's all about. Jesse Custer, a hard-drinking hard-swearing Texan preacher disillusioned with his faith, is struck by divinity when an angel/demon hybrid, that has just escaped from heaven, possesses him. He finds he's been granted the power of the voice - he can tell people what to do and they'll follow his orders exactly. He's joined by Tulip, his gun-toting ex-girlfriend, and Cassidy, an Irish vampire, and the three of them go on a journey to find God, coming against the police, rednecks, serial killers, a secret society, wannabe vampires, the KKK, voodoo and an immortal gunslinger.
A lot of Preacher involves characters talking to each other, often about inconsequential things. It's almost a road trip movie (though with a lot more sex and violence). A lot of conversations harken to the love of Westerns (with the style, tone and setting the story is pretty much a Western anyway). There are a few conversations about Bill Hicks, John Wayne and westerns in general.
Jesse Custer is a likeable character, if just because he's basically a personification of all the ideals of the Old West. He's honourable, tough, strong-willed and yet courteous, confident and charming. He drinks hard, fucks hard put is always polite to the ladies. His backstory and profession work really well in building his character, making the 'preacher without faith' aspect of his character work pretty well.
While many are probably tired of vampires, Cassidy is a more entertaining sort. In a lot of ways, he's exactly not like a vampire. He has no pointy teeth, he has no special sparkling powers, barring regeneration and strength, and he instantly catches fire when exposed to sunlight. He mostly spends his time getting wasted. He's a lot like Colin Farrel actually. The series, at one point, takes the piss out of vampire stuff, mocking the whiny, brooding Anne Rice variety (Preacher was written long before the sparkling idiots of Twilight ever existed).
Tulip is, much like Jesse, tough and strong-willed. Something of a wanderer, she's the gunslinging girl of the group, always with a pistol on her, constantly getting into gunfights with other people. Her relationship with Jesse makes up a lot of the spine of the story, with Cassidy the unreliable support.
Preacher is full of exceptionally gross-out content. In the second volume Jesse and co go to an orgy. Not to participate, mind you, but to look for answers. Being a comic book (written by Garth Ennis) it's pretty explicit, and though it doesn't go as out-there gross-out as some of Ennis' other works ('The Boys' can be easily accused of going way too far on many occasions). Jesse walks in on some people filming a porno involving a little boy. So he pummels the crap out of those there and uses the voice to make sure it never happens again, but that's the sort of content that's there. There are two side characters who call themselves 'Sex Detectives'. They solve crime and mysteries...through rape. Arseface is a teenage boy who shot himself in the face with a shotgun, imitating Kurt Cobain. Only he doesn't die, instead he becomes horribly disfigured, to the point that whenever anybody sees him they can't help but vomit. And yet he's almost painfully optimistic and cheerful (though he does attempt going on the shortest, mildest rip-roaring-rampage-of-revenge I've ever seen).
The bigger reason it probably won't happen, or might be edited substantially, is how it looks at religion (specifically Christianity) and the entire concept of God in an overwhelmingly negative way. Jesse and co are out to find God and get him (Preacher takes the traditional 'old guy with giant beard' description of God) to sort shit out, presumably by knocking sense into him. A lot of the content and tone of the series is likely to cause a massive wave of controversy and complaints.
The point is that Preacher is full of crap like this, the sort of gross-out, too-far things that comics can get away with because the images are still and comics don't have the mainstream exposure capability visual media does. Converting some of this stuff onto television of all things won't work properly. Things will have to be edited or cut. One could argue that cutting it won't hurt a series adaptation, since its not all relevant, but when you start to excise parts of a story's identity then you miss the point.
Another concern is Rogen himself. His writing skills are, actually, pretty decent for the comedies he's done (particularly if that's your sense of humour). The last time he tried to convert something else, things got messy. His script for the Green Hornet remake (in which he starred) was a total mess, leading to a forgettable, messy movie that went nowhere. That's the major concern. That and the pressures of television. TV, moreso than film, is where success can be very fragile. You can have the best production design, script, acting and directing but still end up getting cancelled while garbage continues to get vomited out year after year. The pilot episode itself can kill a show if moronic bigwigs don't get it (Locke and Key's tv adaption got killed in the pilot episode, though general consensus was that it was awesome). Preacher is the kind of series I can see getting killed in the pilot episode phase, where red flags for the content get raised by executives and the project get killed. It's happened before; this isn't the first time a Preacher adaptation had been in the works. The story has been around since the mid nineties, and there's been several attempts to get a version going but it always dies.
Anyway this is all just assumptions at this point. The extent of all this was that Seth Rogen tweeted he was writing a script for a Preacher TV adaptation, and that's all the information there is. It probably won't even happen, but if it does it may not make the transition well.
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