The First Trailer For PREACHER Is Here
Welp, they did it. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg convinced a TV network (in this case, AMC, home of ratings juggernaut The Walking Dead and the dearly-departed Breaking Bad) to fork over the money for an adaptation of Garth Ennis' Preacher. They're not the first to take a run at the property - Preacher has come very close to becoming a movie and a TV series in the past - but they're the only guys who actually pulled it off. Will it be any good? I have no idea. But goddamn do I respect the fact that they made it this far.
Let's take a look at the show's first trailer, which arrived during tonight's episode of The Walking Dead.
Of course I'm going to tell you what I think, but I'm going to preface it by saying the following:
One: I'm a big believer in the Rogen/Goldberg creative team. These are the guys who pulled off This Is The End, one of the funniest movies of the past decade (and, if we're being frank, a movie that turned out ten times better than it had any right to be), the guys whose most recent film, The Interview, came very close to inciting an international incident late last year. They have long since acquitted themselves as a talented team whose work I tend to enjoy, and as such they absolutely have my trust.
And two: I don't think Preacher has aged well. Years ago, I poured through every volume of Ennis and Steve Dillon's infamously offensive series with a massive smirk on my face, convinced I was experiencing something brilliant and transgressive and, yeah, even kind of epic. When I gave the series a re-read earlier this year, I found the whole thing to be...well, a little much. What once felt transgressive now felt desperate to offend (this classic Onion article came to mind more than once), and the back third of the series was even more rambling and anticlimactic than I'd remembered. I came away from that re-read thinking that a Preacher series might not be the best idea ever.
Which brings us to the trailer. What do I think? Well, it certainly looks like an AMC series. And I'm digging Dominic Cooper (as the titular man of God) more than I expected to. The tone's a little more serious than I expected, and that concerns me. Ennis' series operates on a very particular wavelength, and if you're going to do Preacher right, nailing that wavelength is critical to making this material tolerable. There are a few moments of levity here (mostly involving Joseph Gilgun's Cassidy), and those indicate the show won't be too gloomy...but still. This trailer doesn't scream Preacher to me.
Anyway, I remain curious and hopeful. Where you guys at on this?
