Joe Carnahan wants ‘Preacher’

A-Team director Joe Carnahan has revealed that he's got his eye on Vertigo comics' Preacher. The project, a kind of modern-day Biblical Western based on Garth Ennis' awesome series, has been in development for a while, but the director's chair has been empty since Sam Mendes departed for Bond 23. Hey, he might come back yet.

Joe says "I'm really keen on Preacher, because I'm a big Garth Ennis fan. I love that series...  all that crazy shit. I haven't seen a script, but we'll see..."

Preacher's 75 issues, roughly speaking, follow the possessed reverend Jesse Custer, his nubile assassin girlfriend Tulip and their amoral vampire compadre Cassidy, on an odyssey trailing God, who has gone missing.

Carnahan particularly mentions wanting to tackle the subplot featuring the "Allfather" D'Aronique (favourite things: "mass murder and big pies") who leads the Grail organization: keepers of Christ's bloodline in the form of a "special" boy whose vocabulary consists solely of the word "humperdido". We don't know if John August's script already includes any of this. If not, maybe he should start scribbling, although whether any studio would have the balls to go with it is a definite issue.