AMC’s Preacher Could Have Been On HBO

If you find yourself watching Preacher next year on AMC and enjoying it, here’s something to keep in mind: it could have been on HBO.

Not in the form you’ll see it, mind you, with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg developing it and directing the pilot episode. They were always working with AMC from the start.

But this is actually the second attempt to adapt the controversial yet critically acclaimed comic book series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon for television. Preacher was first conceived as a TV show almost a decade ago, with HBO ordering a pilot from writer Mark Steven Johnson and director Howard Deutch. Allegedly, it would have remained extremely faithful to the source material, which may be why HBO decided against producing it several years later.

Thanks to our friends at sister site Bam Smack Pow, you can check out the first teaser for Preacher right here. Dominic Cooper plays the lead role of Jesse Custer, a Texas preacher who decides to travel with two of his friends (one of whom is a vampire) to literally find God and make him answer for the state of certain things on Earth. Custer is aided by the Genesis, a half-demon, half-angel creature that escapes from Heaven and merges with him.

It’s interesting to note that when HBO had a shot at this property, it was still years before Game of Thrones or even True Blood. Certainly, even if the graphic violence and strange sexuality the comics were known for is subdued a bit on screen, you have to figure HBO would have more of a stomach for it today than they would have prior to 2010.

We’re rooting for the series to be good here at HBO Binge, because the more good TV the merrier, yet we’ll always wonder what could have been.