After years in the making, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have completed their screenplay for the “Preacher” pilot, based on Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s DC comic series.
How do we know this? Well, those gutsy dudes at Bleeding Cool have uploaded pages from the forthcoming AMC series, while also breaking down what we can expect.
“It is astonishingly good, more so for being so different from the comic. But not in the way that it feels. It feels like ‘Preacher’ and dammit,” they exclaim in excitement.
Those unfamiliar with the comic, which DC hated, and fans loved (because it’s fucking awesome), the debut issue “began in flashback, with Genesis, the progeny of an angel and a demon, escaping from heaven, killing angels on its way, Jesse getting drunk, exposing his congregation’s secrets in the bat and getting the shit kicked out of him. With Cassidy and Tulip meeting up after a hit went wrong. Genesis possesses Jesse, killing all his congregation, Tulip finding his body, the Saint Of Killers being released, Jesse finding he has the Word Of God, dealing with Sheriff Root who then encountered the Saint, in hot pursuit.
“The pilot episode is utterly different in structure,” the site explains. “Genesis spends the issue moving from holy man to holy man, until it finds Jesse [Custard].”
The script pages shared show that the holy men never seem to be able to handle Genesis, that is until it enters Jesse.
And from the looks of it, I’m expecting the first episode to be very introductory. For example, the site says we will see Sheriff Root, who has been changed from a “bastard” to very small-minded, as well as his son, the iconic Arseface. Then there’s Tulip, Jesse’s ass-kickin’ ex-girlfriend, and everyone’s favorite vamp, Cassidy.
They go on to call the screenplay anti-“Constantine” in nature: “In the way that the TV version of ‘Constantine’ just ripped the politics out of the original comics, ‘Preacher’ keeps them in.
“And that’s what’s so spectacular about this script,” they conclude, “it is inspired by ‘Preacher,’ has been written from the ground up but still reads like ‘Preacher’. ”
I have personally never been this excited about a television series, ever, and that includes “The Walking Dead”. Knowing that it’s in the hands of capable fans like Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg only make this a no-brainer.