Johnson: I haven't even written it yet. Literally my meeting was yesterday on it. So, again, who knows what will happen. My fingers are crossed that it's going to go. They've been trying to make 'Preacher' like 'Daredevil' and 'Ghost Rider' for years and years and years.

How involved would Garth be if the series takes off?

If he wants to be, absolutely. My first meeting was yesterday, and Garth was New York, but he was on the speaker phone. Like all meetings, there were twenty people there and one person on the speaker phone and everyone was going like this to the speaker phone. I've never met Garth and so it was so great to talk to him and ask him questions which is what always happens with the creators. They're like, 'Dude, don't be beholden to the source material. I just did that because of A, B, or C.' He was like, 'Do whatever you want.' I was like, 'No, no, no. It has to be exactly that.' So he's the one who is going, 'Use your own thing.' But I said to him also, 'Are there any stories that you wanted to tell, but you weren't able to? Was there something that you wanted to do, but you didn't have time? I want to hear that too.' We want to fill it out and we want to make it, like I said, a six year show or above with a definite ending, ending the way it does which is incredibly controversial. Again, no one would have the balls to do this, but HBO.

Do you think it'd be harder or easier to do it exactly as it is whereas with 'Ghost Rider' you could play with it and open it up a little bit and pick and choose?

Right. 'Ghost Rider' for years came in and out of circulation for years for a reason. It had flaws. Again, the image was great. The idea was great and so my goal was to find out what made the strengths were and then what could I bring to it. Like I said, the bounty hunter thing was my idea and I think it's a good idea. It helps the whole thing to be stronger, and the creators and the comic people said, 'Yeah, great. We want to do that.' 'The Preacher' doesn't need that. 'The Preacher' is perfect in my opinion. All the things that made people go, 'Nah, it's not for me.' made me go, 'Yeah.' That's what I'm so excited about.

You've dabbled with Marvel and you're dabbling with Vertigo. Are you going to dabble with anything like a Dark Horse product like 'Grendel' or 'The Goon?' Any other comic book character that you want to tackle?

There are so many good ones out there. For a long time I really believed, and even though I'm not attached to it I'll say it if it helps set it up, that 'Midnight Nation' was a really cool story. Joe is such a great author and he and I tried to set that up for a minute. Nothing happened with it, but people should read 'Midnight Nation.' I think that would be a great series. Again, it's a journey. It's like Stephen King's 'The Stand.' It's just like, 'I'm in. I want to see what happens to these people.' It's like 'Lost' or anything else. But there are many things. Right now my focus is on getting this out and doing 'Preacher' right.

Did 'Ghost Rider' wind up being a higher stress level than you expected, making a movie with a flaming skull? The fire is tough to do with CG.

Well, I've seen CG fire before and yes, I thought that it would be easier. We all did which is why we come out February 16^th, but we were supposed to come out in August. Literally, there will be FX delivered up until the end of January 30^th because we had to write new programs. Fire is fucking tricky, man. Look at that fire which looks cool and then you move it and you put it on film at twenty four frames per second it changes everything. It all of a sudden looks really flickery and light and not strong, and so you add liquid to it to make it feel stronger and smoother and whatnot, but then it's like Ghost Rider goes that way and the fire stays here which it really would as a sort of ghost image. We didn't want that because it looked weird. Fire has to be a Ghost Rider. He commands the fire. The fire doesn't command him. All of these little things become like your life, and so it's really about – like I've always said – looking at the greatest CG creations which is Gollum, I think. It's probably like Gollum or the last 'Pirates' Davy Jones was genius. It's amazing, right? Those things are great because you have expression. You have eyes. Gollum's eyes are huge and you've got lines in the eyes and the lips and the teeth are like this. We didn't have any of that. We had no expression. So you've got a skull that's got no eyes, no lips, no tongue, it's got no wrinkles. All you've got is this fucking skull. So you have to deal with that, and then my idea was to use the fire to give it expression. Once you do that that's a whole new thing now and the fire has to change colors. It's got to get smaller when he's sad and go blue. Then angry goes white hot and it gets super high and that became a whole other thing.

How much of that is Nick, all of the Ghost Rider? How much is a hundred percent CGI?

Every time you see the Ghost Rider it's all CGI, but a lot of the times Nick is doing all the expressions and all of that. So it's his body language. It's his movement. It's his talking and everything else. What it would be basically is that Nick, or Eddie his stunt double, depending on the scene and how violent it was, they'd wear a green neoprene skin diver head with an interactive lighting collar to give the interactive light for the flames. So they do that and we remove the head and put the skull on, put the flame on and then it's like, 'How much flame do you put in the eyes so that it's not cartoony?' But you do want to put light in the eyes so that it doesn't go entirely black. Black just disappears.

So the body is most of the time really him?

It's always Nick or Eddie, his stuntman. One of the two all the time.

And the transformation, is that all CG as well?

It's just Nick with putting the CG flame and skull there. Yeah. That's one of the things that I thought would give us the R.

Is the skull based on Nick's own head?

Yeah, it's Nick's skull. It's weird, isn't it?

You make it a painful transformation like in 'American Werewolf.'

That's exactly what we were going for even with the tone of the movie. It's that. That's right. I always like those scenes that aren't movie scenes like when a girl is walking out and all the cops are like, 'Fire! There's a girl right there.' But I love that. It's movie logic.

Who was the lead detective, that actor?

Oh, gosh. He's an Australian actor who was in 'Matrix' two and three. That's how you remember him. I'm sorry I can't remember his name off hand, but he is terrific.

I love the nod to the western Ghost Rider. How much of a role does he play in the film?

He plays a significant role. A lot of people think that shot that you saw is the end of the movie, but it's not. It's actually the kick off of the second act. It's the handing off of the baton. The old Ghost Rider is saying, 'Now it's your turn. Go fight him. The end of the world, everything is on your shoulders.' The difference between Nick as the Ghost Rider and other Ghost Riders is that he didn't sell his soul for greed, for riches or for fame or anything else. He sold it for love and that makes him different.

Did the success of 'Heroes' help out at all with 'The Preacher' deal at HBO?

I haven't seen it. We've never talked about it. I hear it's great, but I haven't seen it yet. I'm going to Tivo it. We've never talked about it, but I think that comic books have done so well that 'Heroes' didn't matter, to be honest with you as far as HBO picking it up. We've been into this for a long time.

Can you talk about casting Sam Elliott and Peter Fonda in this?

Yeah. Well, Sam Elliott is the man. You talk about big stars or whatever, we'd be in Australia and if you walk around with Sam Elliott people just smile. They'll come over to us, and if it's a guy Sam goes, 'Watch. "Road House."' 'Dude, "Road House!" I love you in it!' If it's a girl it'll be one of his other things. He's like people always remember 'Roadhouse.' What I wanted to do is create a movie that has a distinct feel like a western. I want to do a superhero western that's gothic like a Hammer film meets a fucking 'Once Upon A Time In The West.' Sam is that. You see Sam and you're like, 'Okay, I'm in.' It's real and it's good. With Fonda I wanted to get the ultimate motorcycle icon which Easy Rider, Captain America. That makes this the first crossover film. Captain America vs. Ghost Rider! You heard it here.