Too controversial for HBO?
Apparently HBO has given up the idea of turning PREACHER into a television show.
The popular comic, concerning a disillusioned preacher, his gun-toting girlfriend and vampire buddy in search of an absentee God, is apparently too dark, violent and controversial for HBO.
Yes - TOO CONTROVERSIAL FOR HBO.
Somehow I just don't buy this explanation.
This is the network that brought us live car sex in Taxicab Confessions, graphic rape and murder scenes in Rome, prisoners shivving, poisoning and forceably sodomizing each other on OZ.
They're the network that originally gave us all George Carlin's specials, brought us Borat on Da Ali G Show, who gave Bill Maher Real Time when he got bounced from his network gig in a political/religious controversy.
They're going to shrink from PREACHER?
I'd be willing to believe they thought it was too complicated to translate to TV, that a lot of it would have to be changed or wouldn't come across the way it was intended, that the comedy would be hard to balance with the drama and that all of that, on top of the controversy it would create, made it untenable.
Luckily, PREACHER scribe Garth Ennis seems happy in comics. No one seems to be waving him off controversy there. I recently read THE CHRONICLES OF WORMWOOD, in which the hero, a rebellious anti-Christ who has shunned his dad and become friends with Jesus, has anal sex with a perverted Joan of Arc while she talks dirty and begs for more.
And then, two pages later, serious philosophical discussion.
Comments (1)
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If you ask me, 'too controversial' is just a political way of saying the pilot script by Mark Steven Johnson sucked. Considering that Johnson adapted "Daredevil," "Ghost Rider," and John Irving's novel "A Prayer for Owen Meaney" into movies that do nothing if not shame their source materials, I wouldn't be surprised.
And considering the list of film projects Johnson has made, the fact that he won't be ruining 'Preacher' on HBO any time soon is a relief.
Posted on August 27, 2008 4:55 PM