Preacher: 8 Extreme Moments That Won't Happen On TV
"It's buggerin' time!"
Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's Preacher is easily one of the most controversial comic books ever written - and with good reason. It's vulgar, obscene, twisted, brutally violent, sexually explicit, and sets out to shock every chance it gets... and, yes, it's going to be a TV series.
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are developing the show for AMC with Breaking Bad writer Sam Catlin, and they do seem to be huge fans of the material at least, regularly posting behind-the-scenes images and updates to Twitter and such. But even though they may well have every intention of adapting Preacher as faithfully as possible, one has to wonder just how much they will be able to get away with - especially when the restrictions of the network they're dealing with are taken into account.
AMC has proven that they're fine with a bit of extreme gore with the likes of The Walking Dead, but it's a different story when it comes to course language and nudity - and how they handle child pornographers, chicken-shagging rednecks and religion-baiting blasphemy remains to be seen.
Let's take a look at 8 moments from Preacher's 75-issue run that will never make it to the small screen in a million years without some serious watering down....
8. Allfather D’Aronique Expels His Cake
Leader of The Grail, Allfather D’Aronique is an immense glutton who is quite clearly supposed to represent a Catholic Pope. But the fact that he's a nasty, 500lb Papal parody isn't even the most controversial thing about him: D’Aronique also happens to be bulimic.
Eating disorders are a pretty touchy subject these days, and if they are to be addressed on TV then it needs to happen in a mature, sensitive manner. An enormous man gorging himself on vast quantities of cake before sticking an ivory stick in the shape of two fingers down his throat and vomiting all over himself doesn't quite qualify.
Several aspects of The Grail and the characters associated with them will probably cause problems for ABC, but D’Aronique does play a fairly important roll in the story so expect him to be depicted in some capacity... just minus the sick-stick!