It was somewhat unexpected that, after years of different film and TV attempts, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were the people to finally crack getting a version of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher to screens. Now, out talking about Steve Jobs, Rogen found time to discuss the progress of the show.
Preacher, if you don’t know, revolves around troubled smalltown Texan man of God Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper), who merges with the spawn of a demon and an angel named Genesis. After developing the power to force anyone to do what he says, he heads out with assassin ex-girlfriend Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga) and chatty vampire Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) on a journey to find the negligent deity and discover why he is abandoning mankind.
It’ll be controversial for sure, but Rogen seems confident in his team, which also includes Breaking Bad veteran Sam Catlin as the man running the show now that it has been picked up to series. “It’s coming along great! The writers are in Los Angeles in a big room, writing away, trying to plan the series. We’re trying to plan the whole season before we start shooting and writing it. So our hope is to start filming in February and I think we’ll start airing sometime next summer, basically.”
But don’t go thinking that they’ll be treating it exactly the same as in the graphic novel. Nor are they looking to devote one episode to each issue. “No, we are changing the specifics of how the narrative is unfolding. A lot of the building blocks we are not changing, a lot of characters we’re keeping, but we want to make a show that if you’re a fan of the comic, you don’t know what to expect. And we have no interest honestly in just doing a literal page-to-page adaptation. It just seems like the most boring creative endeavour one could go on!”
And while Preacher spawned several spin-offs and supplemental tales, the main story itself is so loaded with people that compromises will have to be made, while squeezing in as much as possible. “In some capacity. I mean there’s some things that even Garth is quick to admit that we probably should not even attempt to put on television. There’s some characters, we’re talking about maybe we combine these two into one person. But to us the tangential element is one of our favorite things. The fact that it does go off into these other worlds and explore these other characters, I mean that’s something that we wholeheartedly intend on indulging in because it’s one of the best parts about the comic. Just the massive tapestry of fucking weirdoes!”
Preacher will hit screens next year on US TV channel AMC and will likely be picked up by a UK channel after that. Steve Jobs, in which Rogen plays Steve Wozniak, will be out on November 13.