The First Trailer For AMC's 'Preacher' Is Here

Adapting anything, much less a cult favorite comic book like, say, Garth Ennis’ infamously blasphemous Preacher, is difficult enough. When bringing a violent, explicative and sex laden, and sacrilegious text to life, it’s even harder on TV and the restrictions of that medium. But that’s exactly what the creative team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are doing at AMC, and the first trailer is here.

The trailer aired last night during The WalkingDead, and I have mixed feelings of what we saw. It’s grim and bleak, and the violence is certainly there; Dominic Cooper seems solid as lead Jesse Custer; Ruth Negga’s Tuplip is still going to make dipshits mad because, gasp, she’s not white like she is in the comic; and Joseph Gilgun is certainly one of the only people alive who looks like the crazy-ass Irish vampire Cassidy.

But it’s also down-the-line serious and missing any of the pitch-black sense of humor woven in with all the rest. It does look like something I’m interested in watching, I just don’t know how much it feels like Preacher. But we’ll see.

The main plot is still in place: a preacher, Jesse Custer, gets a superpower and teams up with his gun-toting ex-girlfriend and the aforementioned hard-drinking Irish vampire to find God and force him to answer for his crime. Considering that Rogen and Goldberg almost caused an international incident with their last film, The Interview, they’re not going to shy away from the controversial side of the story.

Having read the series a few times, I still really enjoy it, but it doesn’t hold up as well as some other titles. There are too many moments where you can see the gears turning and they’re trying so, so hard to shock and offend that it’s disruptive, and the closer you get to the conclusion, the more the narrative rambles and meanders. Still, it’s a lot of fun, and I have hope that Preacher will be something special to watch when it hits AMC next year.