After years of being envisioned as a movie by the likes of Kevin Smith, Sam Mendes, Joe Carnahan, and D.J. Caruso, a possible HBO series, and, occasionally, a comic book you have to read with your eye-holes, Preacher has a new incarnation: a show on AMC, developed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Badass Digest first reported that the network behind the successful comics adaptation of The Walking Dead (and the less successful Low Winter Sun, a loose adaptation of Ziggy) had ordered a pilot based on Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s sprawling supernatural Western, with the hope of finally bringing the tale of outlaw priest Jesse Custer to a screen, any screen. That report was soon followed by a couple of tweets from Rogen, who said, “Looks like about seven of years of hard work are about to pay off. I may get to bring one of my favourite stories ever to life,” followed by a name-check of Preacher characters/reasons why it's been difficult to turn it into a movie: “Arseface. John Wayne. The Saint of Killers.” And then, having inflamed the Internet, he went quiet.
Meanwhile, there’s been no official confirmation from AMC’s side that any of this happening—possibly owing to the fact that, every single time a Preacher adaptation is “confirmed,” an angry God condemns it to development hell. But given Rogen’s statements, it does appear to be the most concrete—and visible—movement on a Preacher project in some time. And, of course, their involvement makes a certain sense, seeing as Rogen and Goldberg both have experience with comic adaptations (Green Hornet), apocalyptic tales (This Is The End), and worlds in which God has abandoned his children (The Guilt Trip).