The DC/Vertigo Comics series that was created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon has been stuck in development hell. Sam Mendes, Rachel Talalay, and Mark Steven Johnson have all taken a crack at adapting the comic, either as a featured film or a television series. The latest names to be attached to the project are screenwriter John August and director D.J. Caruso.
August is best known for his work on "Charlie's Angels," and "Big Fish." While promoting his latest film "Frankenweenie" he mentioned that projects, like "Preacher" get "frozen in 12-point Courier" and he would currently describe it's development as "gestating."
"I don’t know if the birth is going to be anytime soon. That’s the frustration about screenwriting. You can spend a lot of time on a project and sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t happen. The luxury of working on ‘Frankenweenie’ is that I came on and they said, ‘We’re going to make this movie. You wrote the script and I shoot the script,’ and it’s done. That’s remarkable.
You look for filmmakers who will see it and make it. My favorite genre of movies are movies that get made."
As for D.J. Caruso, in February of 2011 he tweeted that he was going to direct "Preacher." A month later while promoting his movie "I Am Number Four" he mentioned that he'd like to cast Chris Pine as Jesse Custer, Alex Pettyfer as the Saint of Killers, and his "Disturbia" and "Eagle Eye" star Shia LaBeouf as Arseface. A year later, March 2012, Caruso announced that his next project would not be "Preacher" but instead be a sci-fi thriller called, "Invertigo." This has many believing that "Preacher" is no longer on his plate, and the film is once again up for grabs.
Preacher tells the story of Jesse Custer, a preacher in the small Texas town of Annville. Custer was accidentally possessed by the supernatural creature named Genesis in an incident which killed his entire congregation and flattened his church.
Genesis, the product of the unauthorized, unnatural coupling of an angel and a demon, is an infant with no sense of individual will. However, as it is composed of both pure goodness and pure evil, it might have enough power to rival that of God Himself. In other words, Jesse Custer, bonded to Genesis, may have become the most powerful being in the whole of living existence.
Custer, driven by a strong sense of right and wrong, goes on a journey across the United States attempting to (literally) find God, who abandoned Heaven the moment Genesis was born. He also begins to discover the truth about his new powers. They allow him, when he wills it, to command the obedience of those who hear and comprehend his words. He is joined by his old girlfriend Tulip O'Hare, as well as a hard-drinking Irish vampire named Cassidy.
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