solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

I'm stunned… It was only last night that I was discussing this possibility with a friend afterwatching Pan's Labyrinth. Preacher, is being immortalised by HBO. (God bless those HBO people…)

Ok, whilst with one hand I'm culling the outbursts of excitement at the prospect of finally seeing the Preacher worked for the screen, with the other, I'll try to offer some sort of idea as to what the preacher's all about. Bear in mind though, that there's no way I can do it justice. You'll have to seek it out and read it for yourselves to truly understand why I almost wet myself when I heard this news…

Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon wrote and visualized the graphic novels. Marvellous they are too. It follows the story of a guy called Jesse Custer, who when a big mishap in heaven occurs involving 2,000 years of incestuous inbreeding, becomes the host for Genesis, a baby like deity that falls from heaven. This pisses Jesse off, and so, with a mind to kicking God's ass, he sets out on a pursuit of biblical proportions. Jesse is pretty tidy with his fists, and has a penchant for white jeans (*cough*Gearge Michael*cough*), but the jeans thing is forgivable. Along the way, we meet his feisty and beautiful girlfriend Tulip, who's a little pissed at him for walking out on her a few years previous and becoming a parish preacher, an Irish vampire sociopath named Cassidy who likes a drink and the occassional fight (they later become best friends since they have the fighting and drinking things in common) a sadistic and completely humourless Herr Starr who's in pursuit of the Preacher, a spirit cowboy who's six shooter never misses, and boy does he like to use it to inflict pain on the un-righteous, and a boy who after the death of Kurt Cobain takes a shotgun to his face but manages to spectacularly fail in killing himself, instead, leaving him with a face like an arse. Colourful characters huh? The graphic novels are truly amazing, and its a real treat to see some really intricate artistry for the covers penned by Glenn Fabry

So, HBO have picked it up. It will be done as a series (lets hope its a feature length episode per book!). Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon will Exec produce. So far so good, it seems like its in safe hands!

There's been talk for a couple of years now about a movie of the preacher, with many many rumours about casting and helmers to boot, but sadly, this never happened. Some early pre-vis stuff was kicking about too, including some images of how Arseface would be portrayed which really did look amazing (inset). However, to be quite honest, I think a series has a much greater chance of capturing everything the books had to offer. I'm excited! 

So let the casting opinions fly. Who'd play Jesse? Who'd play Cassidy? and the saint of killers??  Ooh the possibilities are endless!

Stay hungry!

al 

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 12:42 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.