Last September I told you (via those adorable little footnotes that you all love!) that Mark Steven Johnson was rumored to no longer be the point guy on HBO’s adaptation of Preacher. Then in February Mr. Beaks told you, in the final sentence of a story about another Garth Ennis adaptation, that Preacher was no more at HBO. So I can forgive the internet for treating Mark Steven Johnson’s announcement that the show is dead as some kind of ‘news.’ Maybe we could have brought this to your attention a little better.
But dead it officially is, and Johnson has spoken out on it. “We were budgeting and everything and it was getting really close to going,” Johnson told The Comics Continuum. “But the new head of HBO felt it was just too dark and too violent and too controversial. Which, of course, is kind of the point!
“It was a very faithful adaptation of the first few books, nearly word for word. They offered me the chance to redevelop it but I refused. I’ve learned my lesson on that front and I won’t do it again. So I’m afraid it’s dead at HBO.”
Johnson says that he hears someone is trying to get the rights to make the comic into a movie, but he correctly hopes for a series, as one film won’t do the story justice.