“It’s possibly even sacrilegious I would say”: James Bond Director Came Close to Directing Controversial Comic Book Movie That Would’ve Blown Away Zack Snyder’s Watchmen
Comic book movies are one of the most beloved genres among moviegoers and cinephiles. The success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe is a testament to this. Over the years, some of the best directors have made such movies. Director Sam Mendes was once attached to a comic book movie project. Once.
Unfortunately, the deal fell through and what was supposed to be a movie turned into a series instead. This was none other than Preacher, a graphic novel that was adapted into a television series by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. But before that happened, Mendes was going to make a live-action Preacher film that would have given good competition to Zack Snyder’s Watchmen.
Director Sam Mendes’ Comments on Making a Preacher Film
Preacher is a comic book series published by Vertigo. The talks of adapting the series had been there for a long time. Initially, it was supposed to be a movie which would be directed by Sam Mendes. Then, Mark Steven Johnson, known for creating Daredevil, was attached to the project. However, the adaptation did not exit development hell until 2015 when it was announced that a series would be made.
In October 2008, everyone had gotten hopeful about the film adaptation finally being made after Columbia Pictures acquired the rights to the series. At the time, Sam Mendes was assumed to be directing the movie. In January 2009, when Mendes was asked if he had any updates on the movie, he revealed what he thought of the whole thing although no significant movement had been made in the process of the movie’s making.
MTV News got a hold of the Oscar-winning director on the red carpet of the Golden Globe Awards in 2009. Speaking of getting the chance to make Preacher, he said:
“I think it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s a gripping story, fantastic characters, great visual landscape. It mixes supernatural and real worlds brilliantly… it’s funny, and it’s absolutely, completely blasphemous, possibly even sacrilegious I would say. Which might be a dangerous thing to take on.”
Mendes never made the movie and later, he even revealed what led to him not making the movie that he was so interested in.
Sam Mendes On Why He Did Not Make the Movie
Sam Mendes is one of the only two directors in the filmmaking industry to have worked on two James Bond movies, namely 2012’s Skyfall and 2015’s Spectre. If he had made the Preacher movie, it would have been great, but he had his reasons for not doing so.
While promoting Skyfall in 2012, Mendes explained to Collider why he dropped out of the project, saying:
“It’s a brilliant graphic novel, I loved it, but a lot of it takes place in the real world and we’re surrounded now by fantasy and superhero genre pictures which are full of eye candy. And actually, Preacher is much more real world, it’s more of a Southern Gothic with elements of the fantastic in it; it’s a quite difficult thing to balance. So it wasn’t just that I sort of walked away from it because they wouldn’t pay for it or anything like that, it was because I couldn’t really make it work, I couldn’t find a way of defining what it was onscreen.”
The Revolutionary Road director’s reasons for not making the movie seem logical. If he believed that he could not do it, then maybe he would not have been able to.
