After a long and troubled development period that saw the project go from a feature film to an HBO series to an AMC pilot, Seth Rogen and his creative partner, Evan Goldberg, have finally got an adaptation of the cult classic comic book Preacher onto the screen. During last night’s Walking Dead AMC released the first trailer for Preacher, and it looks f*cking amazing. Not least because, wonky accent aside, Dominic Cooper looks crazy good as the titular preacher, Jesse Custer.
Preacher is one of the only comics I can revisit as an adult and find new things to like about it every time. It’s got an incredibly dense mythology which the trailer doesn’t even touch on, choosing instead to focus on Cooper as Custer, a Texas preacher with a rather unorthodox moral code. (We also get a glimpse of Tulip, Custer’s ex-girlfriend, who is played by Cooper’s real life girlfriend, Ruth Negga.) This a really solid trailer, and it’s not even touching on the supernatural stuff. Custer isn’t just a preacher—he has the power of God’s voice, and can make people do anything he says, up to and including spontaneously combust. And Cassidy, the Irish guy played by Joe Gilgun, is actually a vampire. The whole thing is heaven and hell and angels and demons, and God is the bad guy.
I never really got the appeal of Dominic Cooper, but I’m seeing it now. Or maybe it’s just that after the ugly-on-purpose art from the comic books, the look of the show is an aesthetic relief. Either way, I’m super into it. AMC has already picked up Preacher for a ten-episode run in 2016, which seems very far away. Preacher has been in development in some form or another since the mid-aughts, so I am beyond ready for this show. Especially if it means seeing more of Dominic Cooper in his fancy, silver-tipped collars. This is giving me a Dominic Cooper Problem.
