Preacher Movie Nabs Director of I Am Number Four

[Greg Tito]

Preacher Movie Nabs Director of I Am Number Four

The adaptation of the popular 1990s comic book series about a Texas man of God will be helmed by the guy who brought I Am Number Four to movie theaters this weekend.

Preacher debuted in 1995 on the Vertigo label of DC Comics and ran until 2000. Jesse Custer is a drunken, um, preacher in Texas who, when he's about to address his congregation hungover, is mistakenly possessed by a half-angel half-demon named Genesis. The unnatural union of man, angel and demon, along with his girlfriend and an Irish vampire, goes on a journey to find the Christian God who abandoned Heaven when Genesis was born. The creators, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, always thought Preacher would make a great movie and the project moved around from studio to studio in Hollywood until it finally landed at Columbia Pictures. Sam Mendes (American Beauty) was going to direct with John August (Titan A.E., Corpse Bride) penning the script. When Mendes left to work on the next James Bond film, there was a big hole in the director's chair. Now, that hole has been filled by D.J. Caruso, who most recently directed I Am Number Four.

The thematic elements and violent nature of Preacher will make a strong contrast to the popcorn superhero flicks coming out this summer. Religion and the nature of divinity is a bit more heavy than Captain America or Green Hornet, and the idea that Jesus Christ had descendants which are protected by a powerful conspiracy called The Grail seems more like The Da Vinci Code than a comic book.

Still, I think that if handled correctly by the new director Caruso, Preacher could certainly be an entertaining film that transcends what we think about comic book adaptations. Either that, or it will be complete bupkis on par with Kevin Smith's Dogma [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma_(film)]. Blech.

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[elvor0]

Sweet. Utterly frikking sweet. They'll have to split it up I think though, be a bit difficult to fit it into one movie, I mean they could take out a few of the side stories without damaging the story too much, but a lot of the side stories were integral to the character progression.

I'm sure they'll think of something, although I wonder if they'll have all the same level of disgusting in the comic.

I also look forward to the inevitble uproar when this film comes out from Fox news and various religious groups.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

His name is DJ Caruso? That's the best name ever.

 

[deth2munkies]

Dogma was fucking awesome. Enough humor to balance out the pontificating and a lot of that shit needed to be said.

Hopefully this will be almost as awesome too.

 

[GiantRaven]

Eh, Preacher would work much better as a television series than as a film. I'm not expecting great things out of this.

 

[Actual]

Dogma was amazing, Mr. Tito you have problems.

The Preacher books were what got me into comics/graphic novels and I have a lot of fondness for them. They are so over the top that making them into a decent movie will be incredibly hard, I'm not sure it's good news that we're getting a relatively untried director to work on it.

 

[The Imp]

Thats what i call a great comic book, brings back memories. But still, the whole story compressed into a single 90-120min movie wouldn't work at all. Scrap the movie and sell the rights to HBO, Showtime or STARZ.

 

[se7ensenses]

Eh, Preacher would work much better as a television series than as a film. I'm not expecting great things out of this.

I too wanted a tv series. I don't know how they expect to get the point across in 2 hours.

 

[Therumancer]

I'm a pretty big fan of "Preacher" overall, but to be honest I don't think it would translate well into a movie. It's just too long, with too much nessicary subtext and backround to work. You'd have to skip entire sections, and without them the whole will suffer.

Perhaps as a mini-series it could work, a lot of it is down to earth enough where it wouldn't need a huge budget for FX, but I can't see it as a movie, not even a 3 hour one.

Looks like the desician was made, but personally I'd think they should have brought it to HBO to see if they would be willing to do it. They covered some vaguely similar territory with "Carnivale" and I think they could do this one cheaper, "Carnivale" apparently dying because it was too expensive to make due to the insistance that everything be done authentically, and the stages, costumes, and everything else were really piling up the costs.

 

[Togs]

Im speechless, please dear god let this be awesome!

 

[Tanis]

1) The new director has yet to make a movie I've enjoyed...

2) Unless it's AT LEAST a trilogy, the story will stuffer. It'll be like shoving the Harry Potter movies into one three hour movie - ain't gonna work.

3) I doubt ANYONE in Hollywood has the balls right now to make this movie true to the source.
More so with all the nut-job Evangelicals and Dudley Do-rights trying to censor stuff.

 

[WingedFortress]

Yeah...nothing Caruso has ever done makes me believe he can handle the Preacher. If you've ever read the comics from start to finish, you'd know its a comprehensive tale spanning multiple timelines and dealing with many different and distinct themes. If handled carefully preacher might have made a good television show, but even HBO opted out of a series as they believed it would be 'too dark'. All of Carusos work up until now has been sloppy and underwhelming(I havent seen I am Number Four...but I dont think it will be a game changer for me) and Preacher is frankly one of the best comic series I have ever read. The two just dont fit.

Heres to hoping this somehow gets buried and never see's the light of day.

 

[Maleb]

Eh, Preacher would work much better as a television series than as a film. I'm not expecting great things out of this.

I too wanted a tv series. I don't know how they expect to get the point across in 2 hours.

Ayup. The same discussion that is ongoing with the "Y: The Last Man"-movie. They will prolly hack/slash all the goodlooking actionbits, sequence them together into vague badly paced flick.... meh. sorry for the pessimisme here. You can make a good story out of those plots, but in those comics it wasn't all about the story. Goodluck cramming that into 2 hours.

How about "100 bullets" tv series then? That will make me smile again .....see?

 

[Jack Macaque]

I'm actually looking forward to this, interesting.

 

[Oilerfan92]

I just took a look at Caruso's filmography. Not exactly the best list, but its nit impossible to make it great.

I haven't read the actual comics. But I red the summary on wiki a which ago and it seems to be pretty sweet.

 

[BarbaricGoose]

So Preacher's target audience will be teenage girls, then?

You don't go from a movie that's marketed towards teenage girls to a movie that's actually good. That's just physically impossible. It goes against all laws of greed.

 

[Callate]

From what I've heard about I Am Number Four, it would be a lot better for Preacher to come out like Dogma than like IAN4. More accurate to the source material, for that matter...