Film News: Evan Goldberg talks Preacher TV series, 300: Rise of an Empire director talks sequels

Article by News Team | 10 Mar 2014

EVAN GOLDBERG ON THE FORTHCOMING PREACHER TV SERIES
Producer Evan Goldberg (Superbad, Knocked Up) has spoken out about his plans for the new TV show based on the cult comic hit Preacher, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, in an interview with Collider this week. Goldberg is producing the show for AMC, the channel behind The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, alongside comedy star Seth Rogen. In news that will please fans of the original series, Goldberg confirmed that he and Rogen plan to stick as closely as possible to the source material. 

"We just had a meeting with AMC and Garth Ennis, who’s the writer, and we all kind of seemed to agree that we’re gonna stay as true to the comic as we can," he commented. "We need to change some stuff but we’re not gonna change much, I hope. We’re just gonna do a little more of the preamble instead of doing flashbacks and restructure how we dole out the information a little, but we’re gonna [do the] same characters, same story, same ending. We’re gonna try to stick to Preacher as best we can. We’re making it with Sam Catlin who did Breaking Bad, and so he might tell me I’m wrong about all of this and that the real way to do it is different because he’s much smarter and better at all this than I am. But we’re gonna try to stick to what it is."

Goldberg also said that he believes TV is the best medium for his adaptation: "We’re beyond excited, we’ve tried to make it for ten years," he commented. "The big difference is everyone else tried to make it a movie and it shouldn’t be a movie. It should be an AMC show, that’s the proper way for it to get done… It’s too big; you can’t do that in a movie... You’ve gotta learn the characters, it’s all about a love triangle and you need to grow with them and see the woman swayed one way or the other, and in a movie you just can’t accomplish all that."

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE TEAM TALK SEQUELS AND ADAPTATION
Noam Murro and Kurt Johnstad, the director and writer behind the recently released 300: Rise of an Empire, have spoken out about the challenges of making a sequel to Zack Snyder's blood-soaked original, and their take on the source material by comics giant Frank Miller. "I read it and for me there was just an unbelievable second story to the building of 300," says director Murro in an interview with Den of Geek this week. "It was just mind boggling how you can actually take a movie that ended with everybody dead!"

Murro continues: "We were all joking, do you call it a prequel, a sequel, or an equal and everyone said “Equal sounds good!” because it really is a fresh point of view on a second instalment on a continuum , because it takes place at the same time, but from a different perspective. And to me, from a thematic point of view, that’s an incredible, fresh idea as a conceptual point of view of how to attack it."

Kurt Johnstad, who co-wrote the sequel and the original film with Zack Snyder, also speaks about his approach to the source material. "We went back to Frank," he reveals. "He took some time and came back with a pretty cool story line and just the keel of the story, or the spine of the story and started drawing a graphic novel, and we [were] able to then cull the best parts of Frank’s imagery, his frames, his story and his creative mind... then Zack and I sat down and filled in from the centre of the movie and we kind of fleshed out everything for a screenplay. So that, I think, was a smart decision on Zack’s part and it gave us a little time just to let that mercurial process that is creativity and thinking up with Frank Miller... just having him behind the project – that’s been nothing but a good thing." 

Asked to describe the events covered in the new film, Johnstad reveals: "You get to see where these guys came from, what their motivations are, why they behave the way they do, what the stakes are from maybe a different point of view and that makes it... more compelling and interesting because you really start to see that it wasn’t just one battle at the hot gates, but it was multiple battles, multiple city states. I mean this campaign that had been going on had been waged for years and now we get to drop in and visit these highlighted battles and these dramatic pivot points in history." Asked about plans for further sequels, Murro cannot confirm anything, but jokes: "I think there will be three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine!" Read the interview in full here.

TRAILERS: MUPPETS MOST WANTED, SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR, FRANK, GAME OF THRONES
Four trailers to share with you today – first up, its the return of those irrepressible Muppets, who return this year in Muppets Most Wanted, alongside a host of guest stars including Ricky Gervais and Tina Fey. It's a classic jewel heist caper, with added Muppetry. And what's more, the film will receive a gala premiere at this year's Glasgow International Comedy Festival. It will show on 21 March at Cineworld in Glasgow, with free tickets for the event sure to disappear fast – get yours at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival site. Here's a new clip from the film, plus some interviews with Gervais, Kermit, Miss Piggy and the other stars.

Next up, the first trailer to surface for the much-anticipated follow-up to Sin City. Based on the graphic novels by Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez's ultra-violent neo-noir was a stylistic tour de force, and the sequel shows no signs of turning down the intensity, with Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis reprising their roles, and Eva Green, Josh Brolin and Joseph Gordon-Levitt joining the ensemble cast. 

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Do you remember Frank Sidebottom? For those perhaps too young to recognise Frank, he was a creation of the comedian Chris Sievey ubiquitous in the 1980s and 90s, with a Manchester accent and a massive papier-mâché head. Now, he is the inspiration in a new film Frank, which follows a Sidebottom-like character being played by none other than Michael Fassbender. The title character in this new feature from Irish filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson is a musician, and he and his friends are off to play SXSW. Bizarre. (Read an interview with Frank's writer Jon Ronson and Frank Sidebottom creator Chris Sievey in our March issue)

Last but not least, with just a few weeks to go until Game of Thrones returns to TV, here is the latest trailer for Season 4, with the usual intrigue, violence, and nudie bits. Given the heaviness of recent TV favourites – from the wrenchingly tense In The Line of Duty to the nihilistic and creepy True Detective – we're looking forward to some dragons, direwolves and plenty of bonking, if only for some light relief... although with Thrones, one can never tell. Could a 'Red Wedding'-style kill-fest be just around the corner for our friends in Westeros? The answer is... probably.

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