Soon after it was revealed that Columbia Pictures had finally inked a deal to bring Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's uber-violent comic book series, "Preacher" to the silver screen, it was also revealed that the man helming the film would be "American Beauty's" Sam Mendes.
For those that don't know, Preacher was a long running series about Jesse Custer, preacher who finds himself posessed by a demon. No ordinary demon, this is a being with the potential power to overthrow God himself, and thus Jesse is now the most powerful person on Earth. The series chronicles Jesse's cross country trip to literally find God, who has gotten a bit lazy. The series is extremely violent, and it absolutely bangs the life out of every religious tenet you might hold dear.
It's fucking brilliant, if you ask me.
My problem is that this was initially meant to be a TV series to be aired on HBO. That would've been the perfect platform. Just think about how good and true to the comic the Spawn series was on HBO. This could've been better. A single film can't do this series justice.
Garth Ennis has been on a roll of late. Another one of his comics, The Boys, about a super powered gang who "police" the superhero community has also been optioned into a feature film due to start filming at some point. Ennis's initial storyarc in the recent Punisher comic book series also formed the basis for the storyline of the 2004 film starring Thomas Jane and John Travolta.
