AMC's Preacher Will Need to "Change Some Stuff"

[StewShearerOld]

AMC's Preacher Will Need to "Change Some Stuff"

Writer Evan Goldberg says that AMC's adaptation of Preacher will "stay as true to the comic as we can."

Last month <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/132072-AMC-Working-on-Preacher-TV-Series>AMC revealed that it will be creating a series based on the comic series Preacher. Many fans of the dark, violent and frequently blasphemous book were immediately puzzled as to how the network, which also produced Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, could ever faithfully recreate the book's controversial story for cable audiences. Speaking about the series recently however, writer Evan Goldberg promised that the show's creative team is aiming to be as accurate to the source material as possible.

"We just had a meeting with AMC and Garth Ennis, who's the writer, and we all kind of seemed to agree that we're gonna stay as true to the comic as we can," said Goldberg. Even so, he admitted that some alterations would be necessary. "We need to change some stuff but we're not gonna change much, I hope. We're just gonna do a little more of the preamble instead of doing flashbacks and restructure how we dole out the information a little, but we're gonna [do the] same characters, same story, same ending."

Whatever compromises the show has to make, Goldberg believes that the end product will be leagues better than the movie version that Hollywood has apparently been trying to make for the last decade. "Everyone else tried to make it a movie and it shouldn't be a movie," he said. "It's just too big." According to Goldberg, the proper way to adapt Preacher, of course, is to make it "an AMC show." We have high hopes but time will have to tell if he's right.

Source: Collider




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[bartholen_v1legacy]

Well duh. This was to be expected. This gives the impression that the changes have more to do with story structure, but obviously they're going to have to smooth some of the more jagged edges of the comic.

Still got my hopes up though.

 

[DerangedHobo]

Woooo they can budget cut the fuck out of it and ruin yet another TV series.
Thanks again AMC, appreciate it.

 

[Tanis]

I hope they don't change too much, especially the ending which was fantastic.

 

[Baresark]

I'm looking forward to this. I loved that book. It was just fascinating not knowing what was gonna happen next.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Having read Preacher, there is a lot of stuff in it that i doubt they would put in a series. Will they even go as crazy as the comic was?

 

[GothmogII]

Wonder if I should be disappointed that AMC aren't the ones doing Constantine instead of this. :/ But this kind of reads like the news post on that adaptation. 'We'll try to be faithful to the comic.'

I don't really like the Preacher comic, I read one or two of the trades and all I got was some of the most mean spirited and revolting sequential art I've ever read. Which is odd since I liked most of Garth Ennis's run on Hellblazer, Dangerous Habits especially was downright heartwarming in places.

I'd be quite happy if they stayed well away from the more lurid aspects of Preacher.

 

[Callate]

I wonder if it will still be set in the run up to the year 2000, since that was a non-trivial part of the whole "Grail" storyline arc.

It will be interesting to see what they make of it. I agree that some aspects of Ennis' writing could stand to be filed down (the "sexual detectives" could pretty much be cut out entirely, it wouldn't be a huge loss), but I think there's a lot of stuff in there that could make great television if they get writers and actors of a scope to handle it.

 

[Monoclebear]

I don't think this series should happen.

 

[SquidVicious]

I think it's pretty safe to say that scenes like a man fucking a giant shrine of a woman made out of various animal meats or another man wiping someone's asshole before shooting him in the head won't be shown on the big screen.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Wonder if I should be disappointed that AMC aren't the ones doing Constantine instead of this. :/ But this kind of reads like the news post on that adaptation. 'We'll try to be faithful to the comic.'

After what AMC did to the Walking Dead I have little hope for anything they make that isn't an original series. They turned the Walking Dead from a survival horror to General Hospital with a once an episode zombie appearance. What makes things worse is that the show's poor writing is taking hold on the newer issues of the comics. Very sad to see this franchise go as bad as it has.

I haven't read much of Preacher. It doesn't seem to be my cup of tea. It also seems a bit too cult pop culture to appeal to the mass tastes of the AMC audience.

 

[Quiotu]

They turned the Walking Dead from a survival horror to General Hospital with a once an episode zombie appearance. What makes things worse is that the show's poor writing is taking hold on the newer issues of the comics. Very sad to see this franchise go as bad as it has.

You... you thought The Walking Dead was survival horror? Who survived? You got Rick, Carl, Maggie and Michonne still around in the comic, and how many hundreds dead? The point of the comic and the show isn't about how people survive, but rather how people succumb to the environment. It's like calling Game of Thrones survival horror, you miss the entire point and look really dumb.

 

[JMac85]

Obviously they're going to have to tone down on the profanity, gore, and sex and nudity, but I fear it's going to be many of the central themes that will be cut. Without getting too much into spoilers, God himself is one of the villains of the comic. The whole story is about the protagonist Jesse Custer on a quest to find God... and make him own up to the mistakes he's made. This won't sit well with mainstream audiences. Oh no, not well at all. Considering the moral panics over the likes of Harry Potter for "promoting Satanism", a show on a popular cable network where God is portrayed negatively (to say nothing about how the story ends) would probably spark a damned riot.

 

[Korolev]

Make some changes? Look, I loved the Preacher comics, but goodness gracious it was NOT kind to the Catholic Church. Catholics will be highly, HIGHLY offended if they make a true adaptation. I mean, it's so offensive against the Catholic Church that it's actually hilarious to non-believers such as myself, but I can't imagine my Catholic friends will find it quite so funny. How are they possibly going to air that stuff?

 

[GiantRaven]

This is completely unsurprising. I recently re-read Preacher to refresh my memory of it and a lot of scenes fly by incredibly quickly. I feel that there definitely needs to be some padding to further flesh out the characters and give them more interaction with each other. For example, there's only really one key scene where Jesse and Starr have any kind of interaction together. Over a long running TV series, there needs to be more than that. They need to be able to get way more mileage out of the Angelville section as well. It's a great piece of the story that would pass by way too quickly in a televised format.

On the flip side, there's a lot that can be cut as well. Salvation isn't particularly important to the crux of the story, even though the pacing and character building is nice. Having a huge arc like that, which would basically take up an entire season of the show, would be a complete viewers killer as well. I doubt people would have the patience to stick though such a sudden change in storytelling.

So yeah, I'd expect a Preacher that is very different to the comic. Doesn't mean it'll be bad though.

 

[JMac85]

Make some changes? Look, I loved the Preacher comics, but goodness gracious it was NOT kind to the Catholic Church. Catholics will be highly, HIGHLY offended if they make a true adaptation. I mean, it's so offensive against the Catholic Church that it's actually hilarious to non-believers such as myself, but I can't imagine my Catholic friends will find it quite so funny. How are they possibly going to air that stuff?

The Preacher comics engaged in non-denominational blasphemy. Catholics aren't the only ones who'd be offended by it.

 

[Sandernista]

Make some changes? Look, I loved the Preacher comics, but goodness gracious it was NOT kind to the Catholic Church. Catholics will be highly, HIGHLY offended if they make a true adaptation. I mean, it's so offensive against the Catholic Church that it's actually hilarious to non-believers such as myself, but I can't imagine my Catholic friends will find it quite so funny. How are they possibly going to air that stuff?

I'm Catholic, and I loved Preacher.

Just because we're religious does not mean we can't read well written satire.

 

[GoGoFrenzy]

Noooo. Please leave this awesome comic alone.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Why?
Why Preacher?
I've read Preacher, it really, really isn't as good as a lot of people say it is.

A lot of wasted potential and a lot of "explicit" stuff simply for the sake of being "controversial".
Kind of like Ennis' other work, The Boys.

(Seriously, what is it with Ennis and creating an interesting concept, giving it a good start and then just fuck around a bit till it ends in an anti-climax.)

In short, aren't there better comics out there to run into a series?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

They turned the Walking Dead from a survival horror to General Hospital with a once an episode zombie appearance. What makes things worse is that the show's poor writing is taking hold on the newer issues of the comics. Very sad to see this franchise go as bad as it has.

You... you thought The Walking Dead was survival horror? Who survived? You got Rick, Carl, Maggie and Michonne still around in the comic, and how many hundreds dead?

Just because something is called survival horror does mean that everyone lives.... Where did you get this idea that I said lots of people survive?

The point of the comic and the show isn't about how people survive, but rather how people succumb to the environment.

That's the survival aspect. Glad you have that definition down. The horror aspect is the zombies, you know, the constant, unpredictable, and lethal threat that could end the lives of the characters at any moment.

It's like calling Game of Thrones survival horror, you miss the entire point and look really dumb

No I think you don't know how survival horror works as a genre my friend. More specifically how the horror genre works.