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Seth Rogen’s SXSW ‘Preacher’ premiere ends one long journey, begins another

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Of all the comic book material Hollywood has tried to adapt in its current throes of Marvelmania and DC-dom, not many come with the challenges of “Preacher.”

The mid-1990s Garth Ennis work (from DC’s Vertigo imprint) is dark, it’s sprawling and, most critically, it’s controversial.

A violent story about a pugnacious preacher, his vampire pal and a butt-kicking ex linking up to track down an absent God and take Him to task for the state of humanity isn’t the stuff down-the-middle TV shows are made of. It isn’t even necessarily the stuff basic-cable shows are made of.

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Sure enough, all of these challenges are what creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg faced as they tried to bring the property to the screen.

“Me and Evan grew up together and read a ton of comic books,” Rogen said. “As soon as we had any power in Hollywood we tried to make it.” This involved many false starts, he noted; in fact, there were so many twists and turns that they began their bid during production on “Pineapple Express” nearly a decade ago.

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“It’s always been in the hands of people more talented and powerful than us,” Rogen said. “But they all ... it up. And it rode downhill into our laps.”

Rogen was speaking from the stage at South by Southwest on Monday afternoon. The festival had just premiered the first episode of “Preacher,” the first big step in a commercial rollout that will culminate (or at least begin again) when AMC debuts “Preacher” at the end of May.

The series has indeed taken a wide turn to get here, hitting many bumps in the road before becoming something a product-hungry, edgy-minded cable network wanted to take a flier on.

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“We went from movie to TV to movie back to this,” said Ennis, on the same SXSW panel. “It seems like it’s the right time for this. ‎TV has finally caught up to comics.”

Rogen, striking his trademark we-stink self-effacement, noted that Sam Mendes was at one time signed on to turn “Preacher” into a film, calling that “a much better idea.” Rogen also said the initial idea was for an epic miniseries a la “Band of Brothers” before it morphed into a feature and several other iterations.

The comic filmmaker wasn’t kidding about the other hands -- in addition to Mendes, Kevin Smith, Mark Steven Johnson and D.J. Caruso were among those who had taken shots in various mediums.

The current team of Rogen, producing partner Goldberg and showrunner Sam Catlin (“Breaking Bad”) have at least topped those efforts just by getting it to the screen. Whether they can conquer the creative and audience challenges that blew up the project previously, however, remains to be seen.

The episode shown at SXSW -- we won’t reveal too many specifics here -- basically traces the paths that brought the three lead characters together.

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Jesse (Dominic Cooper), a disaffected preacher with a dark past, has returned to his small Texas town, haunted by the specter of his father as well as a general malaise.

Meanwhile, Tulip (Ruth Negga), Jesse’s ex, is engaging in some necessary violence over in a rural patch of Kansas -- if you were waiting for someone to be killed creatively with an ear of corn, your wait is over.

For his part, Cassidy (the Lancashire-born Joseph Gilgun, playing an Irishman with a young Colin Farrell’s mischievous snarl), is vampirically ripping and sucking his way through life, or whatever it is vampires rip and suck their way through. When we first see him he’s slashing, killing and drinking the blood of high-roller types on a private jet. He then sends the whole plane up in flames, making an emergency-exit with little more than an umbrella and a fresh platelet-y meal. (“This is one of the better jobs I’ve ever had. Being paid to be a [jerk] all day,” Gilgun quipped on the panel, using another word for jerk.)

Theology has begun to manifest itself too, via Jesse as well as the Africa-set preacher whose zapping/possession kickstarts the proceedings.

There are many scenes of stylized violence. People are bloodily bludgeoned. They blow up. As this is a Rogen-Goldberg product, there are also celebrity jokes.

Sometimes several even happen at the same time. The gag that drew the biggest laugh on Monday came when an ambient cable-news report intoned “Tom Cruise has exploded.”

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Whether this mix will work is one of the spring’s most intriguing TV questions. Overlapping audiences aside, the Rogen-Goldberg sensibility is not one that automatically translates to rich comic-material movies, and when they’ve tried even remotely in this genre, as with “The Green Hornet,” material not nearly as dark, the results weren’t exactly stellar.

Fan questions about source-material fidelity have also begun to pop up; in the debut episode, new characters and directions already seem to be in evidence.

Goldberg sought to reassure those in attendance. ‎”It’s really a balance of how to do a TV show and everything you know from a comic book,” he said, noting that the show was starting its action at earlier points than Ennis did. “As the show goes on it will become more familiar to people who are fans of the comic.”

Perhaps the biggest X-factor, meanwhile, is the potential backlash from Christian groups.

Still, one might want to hold off on betting against this series just yet. AMC knows a little something about taking dark genre material to the mainstream, and it’s likely the “Walking Dead” network will have some tricks up its sleeve. And Rogen and the material both have a built-in fan base, as the mostly warm reception at SXSW suggested. Combining all of these, and the various tones, is a leap of faith, but that doesn’t mean it won’t find believers.

@ZeitchikLAT

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