Seth Rogen Talks About Straying From The Source Material With The PREACHER TV Series

As a fan of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's comic series Preacher, I've been extraordinarily curious how Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and showrunner Sam Catlin are going to adapt the extremely violent, wildly controversial content into a TV show. Even on a network like AMC, which allows much more freedom in those regards than, say, NBC or CBS, a lot of the content in the comics is simply too insane for the medium of television to handle. So how are Rogen and his cohorts going to tackle that? It turns out, they're not planning on it. Instead, they're looking to stray from the source material and not do a direct adaptation. Rogen tells CraveOnline:

"We are changing the specifics of how the narrative is unfolding. 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.]"

But what about all of the spin-off content from the comics? Does he plan on including that in the show as well?

"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. 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 fucking weirdos. [Laughs.]"

I had always assumed that a Preacher adaptation, especially done as a TV series instead of being crammed into a film, would try to stay as true as possible to the source material, but it sounds like Rogen and his team are looking to branch out and not be locked in by having to stick close to the pre-established narrative. Until he proves me wrong, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. I know he's a gigantic fan of the original comic, so I'm going to trust that the writers know what they're doing by creating their own version of this story and trying to make something that surprises fans of the comic just as much as viewers who aren't familiar with the original work at all.

Based on Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s twisted ’90s comic book series, “Preacher” is about Jesse Custer, a conflicted Preacher in a small Texas town who merges with a creature that has escaped from heaven and develops the ability to make anyone do anything he says. Along with his ex-girlfriend, Tulip, and an Irish vampire named Cassidy, the three embark on a journey to literally find God.

Dominic Cooper, Joseph Gilgun, Ian Colletti, and Ruth Negga star, and Preacher will debut on AMC sometime in 2016.