It’s been over a decade since creator Garth Ennis first pitched his supernatural Western comic Preacher as a film project, and since then it’s gone through several false starts (including an aborted HBO series) with myriad names attached—the most recent being Sam Mendes, who abandoned the project last year to focus on the next James Bond film. And although MGM’s financial troubles have freed Mendes from that particular obligation, SuperHeroHype is reporting that A-Team director Joe Carnahan has offered to officially take the eternally stalled project off his hands, saying he’s “really keen” on tackling the series.
There’s no word on whether this is just wishful thinking on Carnahan’s part—much like his dream for a film based on the Marvel villain Taskmaster, which he also talked at some length about—or if it’s his coy way of letting on that he’s the new, unnamed director that producer Neal Moritz was said to be pursuing when Collider asked him about Preacher back in April. During that same interview, Moritz mentioned that he planned to start shooting the film as early as 2011 using the same script that John August originally wrote for Mendes, and that the plan was to spread the Preacher story out over several films. If Carnahan were to take over Preacher, he at least seems to have some reverence for the material: “You gotta do the Allfather (D'Aronique) and all that crazy shit, and I haven't seen a script and I don't know what it is, but yeah, we'll see. Who knows?”