Seth Rogen was at South by Southwest this year to represent his new comedy co-starring Zac Efron. But when we had the chance to sit down with the actor-writer-director, we couldn’t help but pick his brain about one of his most anticipated upcoming projects: “Preacher.”
Rogen, along with his frequent writing and producing partner Evan Goldberg, is one of the creative minds behind “Preacher,” AMC’s latest attempt at bringing a beloved comic book series to the small-screen. Like “The Walking Dead,” the Garth Ennis-penned and Steve Dillon-illustrated “Preacher” features no shortage of guts and gore. But the adult material extends to super-bad language and copious amounts of nudity, including one memorable sex scene involving a statue made of meat.
Many have tried to adapt “Preacher” before, and all attempts have failed thus far. Does Rogen think the team that he and AMC have assembled can finally bring the raunchy, R-rated “Preacher” to live-action in a way that honors the source material?
“I think we can,” he told MTV’s Josh Horowitz. “The language, probably, we’ll have to be slightly creative with — because we can’t say the word ‘f—‘ over and over again on AMC. But the violence and the sexual elements and the overall edgy nature of [‘Preacher’], they haven’t given us any indication so far that it needs to be toned down.”
“We just had our first big meeting with them: Sam Catlin, our show runner, [‘Preacher’ creator] Garth Ennis and AMC,” he continued. “We all just got in a room for the first time last week. It was very encouraging. Everyone came out very happy. I can’t believe that we might be the 30th people to fail at making ‘Preacher,'” he joked.
And fans will be happy to know that Rogen’s “Preacher” plans very much include folks like Arseface, the dim-witted, disfigured, unwitting rock god with a score to settle against God-hunting preacher Jesse Custer. But the AMC team isn’t quite at the casting stage. “We haven’t even written the pilot yet,” said Rogen.
One thing’s for sure: Rogen learned a lot about how to pull off a comic book story thanks to “Green Hornet,” his 2011 comic book movie that debuted to mix reviews.
“I think overall, what we learned from that, is we need to exist in a much more edgy universe,” Rogen said about the lessons learned from his “Green Hornet” experience. “What was frustrating about ‘Green Hornet’ is that we came up with edgy ideas, but we couldn’t do them, because it was a PG-13 movie. With ‘Preacher,’ it seems that won’t be a problem. There’s plenty of subversive craziness for us to sink our teeth into.”
Are you looking forward to Rogen and AMC’s “Preacher” adaptation?
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