Seth Rogen On His Approach To Adapting Preacher For Television

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg spent the summer shooting the Preacher pilot, an adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steven Dillon's DC/Vertigo comic book series. AMC was pleased with it and last month ordered a ten-episode first season.

While doing press for his new film Steve Jobs, Rogen discussed how Preacher is coming along. "It's coming along great!" Rogen exclaimed to Crave Online. "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."

A good number of times when comic books are adapted to the small or big screen there are significant changes to the source material and Preacher will be no different. "We are changing the specifics of how the narrative is unfolding," he explained. "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 endeavor one could go on! [Laughs.]"

Preacher led to a handful of spin-offs. Will Rogen find a way to fit it all in? "In some capacity. I mean there's some things that even Garth will argue, is quick to admit that we probably should not even attempt to put on television," he said. "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 f*cking weirdos. [Laughs.]"

Preacher follows Reverend Jesse Custer, a tough Texas preacher who has lost his faith, and has learned that God has left Heaven and abandoned his responsibilities. He finds himself the only person capable of tracking God down, demanding answers, and making him answer for his dereliction of duty. Accompanying Jesse on his journey is his former girlfriend and a friendly vampire who seems to prefer a pint in the pub to the blood of the innocent. On his tail is one of the most iconic bad guys in print – an immortal, unstoppable killing machine named the Saint of Killers —a western lone gunman archetype whose sole purpose is to hunt and kill Jesse.

Preacher will premiere on AMC in May 2016.