After a significant buildup for those who enjoy profane, gratuitously violent comics, Preacher is still cruising along toward a May 22 premiere on AMC. The show’s fitting trailer and character photos were followed by a lull in the storm before the delivery of a blasphemous teaser and a good look at the unmistakable Arseface. The promotion appears to be hitting all the right cues.
Still, fans wonder how faithful Seth Rogen’s television adaptation of Garth Ennis’ works can possibly be. There was a rather large internet ruckus after folks learned no F-bombs will be included, which does not bode well. If there’s already a language issue, how can the show’s producers pull off the level of explosive violence that resided within the source material? Sure, adaptations mostly concentrate upon being faithful to the project’s spirit, but mayhem feels essential to Preacher. Collider sat down with showrunner Sam Catlin, who promises there’s no need to worry about a “Preacher Lite”:
“If we were to shoot the comic book of Preacher, it would be like $400 or 500 million, we would be unproduceable. So how do we make a show that is a TV show but pushes all of those boundaries in a similar way that doesn’t feel like ‘Preacher Lite’ or ‘Preacher TV.’
“He’s sort of a preacher in name only in the comic book. You never see him as a preacher, but he’s immediately disillusioned and on his way out. Once we sort of figured out maybe we can still have this gonzo world and have all these crazy things happening and he’s still trying to be a preacher, still kind of trying to do preacher sh*t. And help people, but not in a boring navel-gazing way, but sort of a spiritual sheriff to this town and once we came up with this idea of this really sin-soaked town that needs redemption, it felt like that was a good place to start.”
Should fans fret after learning Catlin had never read the Preacher comic before Rogen insisted he do so? The showrunner says comics were only part of his childhood, but Rogen convinced him that this series was worth exploring. And so someone new fell in love with the collision of gods, angels, vampires, cowboys, and cults. After Catlin’s Breaking Bad experience, folks should have a little faith, and he takes a moment to compare Walter White with Jesse Custer:
“Walter White is a good man trying to turn bad and Jesse Custer is a bad man trying to turn good, in a lot of ways. That’s not really true because Walt was really, he was what he was all along underneath that. Walter White makes so many things possible in terms of protagonists and we learned a lot on that show about how dark we can push a character and still have the audience be in his corner.”
Catlin does reveal that AMC has been ultra cool when it comes to the show’s requisite violence. He says one key scene was difficult to pull off in a television setting, but he won’t reveal which scene it was. There are so many moments to choose from, but of course, the show is only beginning. We’ll have to wait and see whether this adaptation is faithful not only to the Preacher spirit, but if can deliver visceral thrills as well.
(Via Collider)
