DJ Caruso to Possibly Helm "Preacher"

DJ Caruso to Possibly Helm "Preacher"

Movie News

By our guest blogger, Nick Hanover

There's still no official confirmation on this but earlier in the week, DJ Caruso took to Twitter to announce that he closed a directing deal on Preacher, a long gestating comic property that has had names as diverse as Kevin Smith, Sam Mendes and Darren Aronofsky attached to it at one point or another.

Caruso, who is fresh off the relative success of I Am Number Four, apparently sees Preacher as a way to return to his "dark" roots which I guess would mean Disturbia. But Preacher, which was one of the biggest hits for DC subsidiary Vertigo Comics from 1995 to 2000, is a notoriously difficult to adapt franchise. The story, which was written by hotshot comics creator Garth Ennis and penciled by collaborator Steve Dillon, concerns the titular preacher, Jesse Custer, who winds up being the host to a demon-angel hybrid named Genesis and decides to use his bond with Genesis to track down and take on the almighty God himself, who vacated the throne of heaven long ago.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest obstacle towards Preacher making it to the big screen over the past two decades has been its controversial subject matter, which has been seen by many execs as potentially blasphemous. The story also deals with such family friendly subjects as rape, suicide, rape, incest, rape, mass murder, rape and, oh, more rape. That's without even mentioning its gratuitous sexual and violent content, the presence of a character named "Arseface" and one villain who is literally a d!ck head. On the plus end of things, it does feature a vampire. No sparkly skin though.

Whether Caruso is or isn't the director at this time, that still doesn't necessarily indicate the film is any closer to being produced than it was before, since at one point James Marsden had even been cast in the lead role and shooting had supposedly began before that specific era of the film's development closed. Even if Caruso manages to make the film, there's still the little issue of it being distributed and, well, being any good.