After incurring the wrath of North Korea with The Interview, writer-directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are coming back to U.S. shores by adapting the graphic novel series Preacher into a TV series for AMC.  Gareth Ennis and Steve Dillon's 75-issue series begins with small town preacher Jesse Custer receiving the power to speak with the “Word of God” and command others to do his bidding, but the story then expands far beyond to include an Irish vampire, sadistic cousins who will fuck anything with a hole, a relentless and perverted operative, the “Saint of Killers” who can kill anything, and a character who, in a failed suicide attempt, blows his face off and takes on the name, “Arseface.”

Breaking Bad writer Sam Catlin will be the showrunner with Rogen and Goldberg directing the pilot.  Rogen took to Twitter to let fans that not only were they getting to work on the series, but also what some of their inspirations would be.  Hit the jump for more.

Here's what Rogen tweeted out:

[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/Sethrogen/status/555864340352335873[/EMBED_TWITTER]  

 

[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/Sethrogen/status/555864769333166081[/EMBED_TWITTER]  

The heavy presence of westerns isn't a shock since the blood of that genre runs through the veins of Preacher even though it isn't a traditional western.  However, I'm somewhat struck by the absence of John Wayne movies since the actor (or rather, his screen persona) is so important to Jesse's life.

More interesting are the movies that fall further away from the western genre.  There's still violent material like I Saw the Devil, The Raid, and Kill Bill, but there's also softer inclusions like The Tree of Life, Badlands, Friday Night Lights, and Short Term 12Tree of Life and FNL at least make some sense since Texas plays a big part in the books, but if Preacher gets picked up for a series, I'll be looking hard for Short Term 12's fingerprints.

short-term-12-brie-larson
Image via Cinedigm