D.J. Caruso Latest Director Cast into “Preacher” Development Hell

If the concept of "Development Hell" is anything like Dante's "Inferno," than the comic book "Preacher" rests somewhere between the Circle of Vague Possibility and the Circle of Never in a Million Years.

And yet, we can now add another name to the list of directors who have tried to bring the story of a Texas preacher on a quest to find God and kick his ass to the big screen. And it's "I Am Number Four" director D.J. Caruso.

From the intrepid guys at Collider comes word that Caruso will be attempting to wrangle the sprawling, bizarre, and often NC-17 comic, something that the likes of Mark Steven Johnson ("Daredevil," "Ghost Rider") and Sam Mendes ("American Beauty," "Jarhead") have attempted and failed.

Created by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, "Preacher" follows a man of the cloth who has a crisis of faith right at the moment when a divine power (the spawn of a tryst between a male angel and a female demon) falls from the sky and imbues him with "The Word of God" - Basically, the power to command anyone to bend to his will. So he immediately sets off with his gun-toting girlfriend and his best friend (who happens to be an Irish vampire) on a quest to find God himself and give the man a piece of his mind. Their journey includes everything from inbred rapists to a supernatural Terminator called The Saint of Killers to an oddly touching tribute to late comedian Bill Hicks to a man who has sex with a statue made entirely of meat.

Any wonder studios are a little skittish?

Whether or not Caruso is the man for the job remains to be seen. So far, his movies - "Disturbia," "Eagle Eye" and even "Number Four" - have proven to be adequate but not all that memorable, either in style or content, which has us questioning whether he can really bring the kind of whacked-out go-for-brokeness "Preacher" needs. Not to mention that the "Preacher" tale spans 75 issues filled with flashbacks and tangents - not the easiest thing to boil down to a quick 2 hours.

Welcome to Hell, D.J.

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