Saturday, May 21, 2016

How 'Preacher' Plans to Tackle its Violent and Graphic Source Material

"'The Walking Dead' has given us a lot of precedent to do a lot of stuff that we might not have otherwise been able to do," EP Seth Rogen says of the show's violent nature.
Photo from The Hollywood Reporter

WARNING: SPOILERS


There's a moment in the first episode of Preacher where a drunken Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) threatens to make a man sound like a bunny in a bear trap. Confused on the mechanics of that threat? Custer clears it right up in a matter of sickening seconds.

It's not the first moment of gratuitous violence on the new AMC series, either, coming only after viewers have already witnessed an assassin bite another killer's ear off, which in turn follows a hedonistic vampire turning an airplane filled with slayers into a veritable meat factory.

Though these scenes are not ripped straight out of the Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon comics on which the show is based, they are tonally faithful. In fact, they're rather subdued in comparison to the nasty material contained within the Preacher source material. Across sixty-six main series issues and various tie-in installments, characters shoot each other's limbs off, others are decapitated (some more fatally than others), eyeballs are removed by holy entities… and that's not even counting the endless stream of violent action committed against the antagonist, Herr Starr.

This is the exact type of nastiness found all throughout the Preacher comics. But will it be found throughout the Preacher TV series? Again, from the premiere episode alone, the creators of the show are not shying away from brutal action. Speaking at a press conference attended by The Hollywood Reporter, executive producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg made it clear that they're able to get away with a lot more explicit content than even they expected.

"If anything, I'm surprised at what we can do," said Rogen. "The Walking Dead has given us a lot of precedent to do a lot of stuff that we might not have otherwise been able to do."


Sounds like I'm going to have to watch this one with a handy view-blocking pillow nearby. 


Read more details about what's to come at The Hollywood Reporter:

Photo and text from The Hollywood Reporter

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