Tonight, HeyUGuys has a tweet in store for all you Preacher fans out there (tweet = treat, get it? Never mind), one which strongly suggests that D. J. Caruso, director of Disturbia and the soon to be released I Am Number Four, is set to helm an upcoming adaptation of the comic book series.

Writing on his Twitter account, the director today commented: “My deal just closed on Preacher. Going back to the dark side and pretty fucking pumped!” Although it’s always best to wait for studio confirmation on these matters, this news suggests we might finally see some movement on the long discussed adaptation.

Stuck in development hell for the last ten years, Preacher has seen several scripts come and go (including screenplays by the comic’s writer and co-creator, Garth Ennis) along with around half a dozen directors (the A-Team’s Joe Carnahan joining names as established as Sam Mendes, who left the project to focus on Bond 23). The latest known version comes from a screenplay by John August (Big Fish), which itself has been doing the rounds for at least a year.

Created by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Preacher tells the story of Rev. Jesse Custer, a disillusioned Texas priest who teams up with Irish vampire named Cassidy and his ex-lover Tulip to track down God and demand answers. You see, the Lord has left Heaven in the wake of an unholy sexual union in which an angel and a demon conceived a new entity – a being that has now embedded itself in Custer, allowing him to command people with the Word of God. It’s a journey that is both dark and twisted on a monumental scale.

Speaking of monumental, that word may go some way to explaining why a Preacher film has such difficulty getting off the ground. Preacher is big. The synopsis above essentially covers Volume 1 of what is a nine volume story arc.  Word has it then when Mark Steven Johnson was commissioned to try and turn Preacher into a mini-series for HBO, he said that “Every issue [had to be] an hour”. That would be sixty-six hours of episodes. Getting things down to a two-hour runtime can’t have been easy.

So, with Preacher finally set for the big screen, is D. J. Caruso the man for the job? His latest fare may seem slightly mainstream, but his 2002 breakthrough The Salton Sea certainly had no lack of dark subject matter. But what do you think – should a Preacher film be made, or have studios been right to keep the project on hold? Comment below to let us know.

Source: TheFilmStage