Fans won’t be seeing an adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher on HBO.
Mark Steven Johnson, who wrote the pilot and was set to serve as an executive producer, tells Comics Continuum that the new head of the cable network thought the series “was just too dark and too violent and too controversial.”
“It was a very faithful adaptation of the first few books, nearly word for word,” says Johnson, who directed Daredevil and Ghost Rider. “They offered me the chance to redevelop it but I refused. I’ve learned my lesson on that front and I won’t do it again. So I’m afraid it’s dead at HBO.”
Plans for the one-hour TV series, announced in November 2006, were welcome news for fans who had been disappointed when a previous attempt to adapt Preacher as a feature film was abandoned.
Johnson says there are efforts to give a movie another try: “I’ve heard someone is in the process of getting the rights to turn it into a feature film. I hope that happens. But I hope it happens as a series of movies as one movie couldn’t do it justice.”
August 26th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
That sucks - HBO series as a whole have been getting a little softer - I would love to see this maybe pushed to Showtime - as they are what HBO was 5 years ago. They have the shows that I get excited about Weeds, Californication, etc. Maybe the balls to put on an edgy show just moved to a new channel
August 26th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
…HBO just proves once again they’re a bunch of cowards. They can make a series about a mormon with three families, but Heaven forbid they take a stab at a series like Preacher. Wimps.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Damn, yet another series cancelled by a change in network hierarchy. Bastages! Happens too many times…
Guess they won’t be adapting my “Vatican Assassin” any time soon, lol!
August 26th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Sucks. New management always without fail means that someone gets the shaft. In this case, it was fans of PREACHER…
August 26th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
why not showtime?or is it owned by vertigo/dc warner bros.
August 26th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
That’s probably for the best. I mean, sure, everyone would love to see “Preacher” adapted. But do you really want to see a commercial that starts with, “From the man who brought you ‘Daredevil’ and ‘Ghost Rider’”?
With special guest director Kevin Smith?
August 26th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Blessing in disguise really. Do we really want the guy that killed Ghost Rider behind this show?
August 26th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Just how dark, violent and controversial does anything have to be to be beyond airing on the network that gave us The Sopranos and Deadwood?
August 26th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
That sucks. I had been wondering what was going on with this, hadn’t heard anything since it was announced a couple years ago.
“They offered me the chance to redevelop it but I refused. I’ve learned my lesson on that front and I won’t do it again. So I’m afraid it’s dead at HBO.” That right there is cool to hear.
Screw HBO, they seriously lost their balls around the last season of Carnival. “Ohhh…. No. What will our conservative Christian viewers think..” Nothing. Their too busy watching/complaining about the Disney Channel. They should just pitch the show to Showtime.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
“Just how dark, violent and controversial does anything have to be to be beyond airing on the network that gave us The Sopranos and Deadwood?”
Preacher is far more out there than those shows.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
This sucks, hopefully a series could land at Showtime, I cant believe HBO is backing out of this, big deception from them…
Other than a series of movies, I cant see this working out as a 1 movie only.
August 26th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
We should be happy about this, at least for the fact that the guy who directed Daredevil and Ghost Rider and who wrote the Elektra film won’t be able to bring down Preacher as well.
August 26th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
PLEASE don’t let MKJ near anymore comic properties, he has a brown thumb when it comes to working on them.
They all turn out to be POS…
August 26th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
To tell the truth, that was the sole reason I was hanging on to my HBO package.
Guess I get to save some cash after all.
August 26th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Anybody thinking Showtime would ever air an accurate adaptation of Preacher should look at what they did to Dexter: they took the premise of an incredibly twisted black comedy/psychological horror series and turned it into a slightly more violent version of CSI: Miami while sanitizing the protagonist so much that he barely even resembles a sociopath most of the time. They eliminated most of the continuing subplots in favor of their own, completely changed the plot beyond the end of the first season, and at this point the show barely resembles the source material.
You can say a lot of things for Dexter, but you can’t possibly say that it’s a good adaptation of the source material. Given that track record, I’d be extremely leery of a Showtime version of Preacher.
August 26th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
HBO series used to be good. But if they weren’t willing to do it RIGHT, I am glad the didn´t do it at all
August 26th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
To be honest with you though, Ghost Rider is strictly a mid level character and pretty much got the movie he deserved. It’s not like this amazing character and story were brought down by an adaptation so many levels beneath the source material.
August 26th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
The Wire was possibly the greatest show ever so get off your crosses fanboys. If the premise and execution is good enough someone will pick it up so relax.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
After the abortions that were Daredevil and Ghost Rider, I’m pleased as freaking punch this isn’t getting made. Mark Steven Johnson needs to be kept far, FAR away from comic book adaptations.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
A lot of people are ripping on Johnson but remember a directors view of one property might not be relevant to the next - look at how hopeful we were for Singers Superman after he did a really decent job he did on X1 & X2.
Johnson also stated he was going to be amazingly accurate to the comic even making each episode match the issue one for one.
I had hope - and now the HBO unics have killed it - maybe they should try to renew Seventh Heaven for HBO - that seems edgy enough for them
August 26th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
“They offered me the chance to redevelop it but I refused. I’ve learned my lesson on that front and I won’t do it again”
Is this what happened to Ghost Rider? It was supposed to be a modern Western featuring a hellspawn on a motorcycle and it turned out to be a romantic comedy with PG-13 violence and I Am Legend quality cgi. So when will the real Mark Steven Johnson show the goods?
August 27th, 2008 at 3:29 am
Anybody else think the pilot just wasn’t very good (or not what HBO was looking for) and MSJ is using the “too controversial” thing to make it look like it wasn’t his fault?
Controversial sells, people. Controversial MADE HBO. Any executive with half a brain eats up “controversial” properties. I can’t imagine that the new head of HBO is so dumb he would pass on Preacher for that reason.
August 27th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Whatever the case with HBO and Showtime, there’s your answer to the question: “Why comics?” right there.
August 27th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Whilst the idea of a Preacher TV show was great, I just can’t help but feel it would have killed the books for me.
Not many books are carried into film/tv very well, and some of the subjects in Preacher would have been too strong for TV adaptation.
For now, leave Preacher alone (or at least give us absolute editions!) until TV is ready.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Preacher is by far my favorite comic book series ever published…however the thought of The Catholic League running protests on this one, and the possibility of losing subscriptions made it pretty much a given that, if true to source material, this series would never make the air. The HBO execs would’ve been $#!tting their pants.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:11 am
“You can say a lot of things for Dexter, but you can’t possibly say that it’s a good adaptation of the source material.”
I agree - getting rid of his older sister DeeDee was the dumbest move I’ve seen in years.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Not disappointed in the least, for a number of reasons. First, as a number of people have pointed out - Mark Steven Johnson. Ick. Preacher goes through a wide range of tones and emotions throughout, but Ennis pulls it off. And then you look at Daredevil, which couldn’t keep a single tone consistent for more than 5 minutes, and you realize how awful this show could have been.
But I don’t think Preacher would translate well into TV or a movie. I don’t have an extreme opinion about comic adaptations, like, say, Alan Moore, but he’s mostly right. There are some things a comic can do that other media cannot - namely superheroes, but also crazy stories like Preacher. I think HBO might actually have the balls to do all the religious stuff - it’s the more outlandish Ennis-y type things, like the ‘Salvation’ storyline, or Arseface, etc. that would scare them away. I would hate to see how that stuff would be watered down.
August 27th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
“You can say a lot of things for Dexter, but you can’t possibly say that it’s a good adaptation of the source material.”
Indeed - the book was written on a fifth-grade level with crappy, 2D characters. The show is actually good, shockingly.
August 27th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
You’re completely missing the point of the Dexter books. The supporting characters are two-dimensional because Dexter is completely incapable of understanding human behavior on any level and the story is told entirely from his perspective. There isn’t supposed to be character development for Doakes or LaGuerta or the like because as far as Dexter is concerned, they’re obstacles, not people. The whole world of the book is divided into serial killers and the idiotic cowlike masses that surround them. If you don’t find the prospect of Doakes getting his arms, legs and tongue cut off then mutely clanking around the police station on prosthetic limbs inherently hilarious, I don’t know why you’re watching a black comedy about a serial killer to begin with.
By contrast, the show just has a bunch of incredibly annoying, badly acted cardboard cutouts interspersed with horrible voiceovers by Dexter that swing from “I am not human, I feel no emotions and I never will” to “PERHAPS I UNDERSTAND WHAT THESE HUMANS CALL ‘LOVE’ AND WHY THEY HAVE FEELINGS” like a pendulum.