It's been obvious for a while now that Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Sam Catlin's Preacher series for AMC won't be a completely faithful adaptation of the Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon comics, and Rogen explained some of the changes they've made during an interview with CraveOnline. Rogen says they aren't going with a "one issue equals one episode" formula for the series, and that they want to surprise the people who have read the comics.
We are changing the specifics of how the narrative is unfolding. A lot of the building blocks we are not changing, a lot of characters we’re keeping, but we want to make a show that if you’re a fan of the comic, you don’t know what to expect. And we have no interest honestly in just doing a literal page-to-page adaptation. It just seems like the most boring creative endeavor one could go on! [Laughs.]…I mean there’s some things that even Garth will argue, is quick to admit that we probably should not even attempt to put on television. There’s some characters, we’re talking about maybe we combine these two into one person. But to us the tangential element is one of our favorite things. The fact that it does go off into these other worlds and explore these other characters, I mean that’s something that we wholeheartedly intend on indulging in because it’s one of the best parts about the comic. Just the massive tapestry of fucking weirdos. [Laughs.]
I get what Rogen is saying, however fans of the comic (including yours truly) have been waiting years for a live-action Preacher adaptation, and I think straying too far from the source material could turn them off. While I have absolutely no problem with Ruth Negga playing Tulip O'Hare instead of a white actress, I'm not going to be happy if the series ends up being Preacher in name only. But I'm still optimistic about the project, and Rogen is also Preacher fan, so he wouldn't do that to us…right?
Preacher is expected to premiere sometime in 2016.