"Pilot" is the series premiere of the supernatural drama television series Preacher, which originally aired on AMC in the United States on May 22, 2016. The episode was written by the creators of the television adaptation, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Sam Catlin; with both Rogen and Goldberg directing. The pilot encore was followed by Talking Preacher, AMC's after-show hosted by Chris Hardwick.
The episode introduces Dominic Cooper as Jesse Custer, Joseph Gilgun as Cassidy, and Ruth Negga as Tulip O'Hare, as well as series regulars played by Lucy Griffiths, W. Earl Brown, Tom Brooke, Anatol Yusef and Ian Colletti. In Preachers pilot, Jesse Custer's past slowly catches up to him and he struggles to escape it, while a mysterious entity arrives on Earth, causing a wave of destruction in its path.
Principal photography for the pilot began on May 13, 2015, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Filming took place over two months, ending in early July. Principal photography was confirmed to have ended on July 10, 2015, with post-production beginning in August 2015.
The pilot received acclaim from critics, who found the pilot to be a respectful interpretation of the comic, for Rogen and Goldberg's direction, as well as the dark humorous tonality, while praising Cooper, Gilgun and Negga's performances. In the United States, the series premiere achieved a viewership of 3.8 million, making it one of the top three cable premieres in the 2016 television season. The episode garnered a Nielsen rating of 0.9 in the 18–49 demographic, translating to 2.4 million viewers.
Plot In outer space, a bright object crosses the galaxy and finds its way to Earth, specifically Nairobi, Kenya, where it strikes a preacher, Irungu Mutu, and inhabits him. He explodes shortly thereafter, causing his congregants to flee.
In Annville, Texas, the local preacher Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) gets dressed and leaves for church. Jesse walks to All Saints Congregational and delivers an uninspired sermon to a bored and distracted congregation. At the Sunday barbecue outside the church, a young boy named Chris (Thomas Barbusca) tells Jesse that his father, Donnie (Derek Wilson), abuses his mother. He asks Jesse to hurt his father, though Jesse warns him that violence simply leads to more violence. Sheriff Hugo Root (W. Earl Brown) asks Jesse to check in on his son Eugene. Jesse tells Sheriff Root that Donnie is beating his wife, Betsy, but Sheriff Root refuses to investigate unless Betsy files a formal complaint.
In a corporate jet, a group of hedge funders drink with an Irishman named Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun), who tells tales of his last trip to Tijuana. After discovering in the bathroom a Bible whose pages are covered in thick notes scrawled all over them, Cassidy notes that the plane is not flying toward Tijuana. He then kills the hedge funders and pilots, who turn out to be assassins. Cassidy reveals himself a vampire by drinking the pilot's blood and jumping out of the soon-to-crash plane with a to-go bottle of blood and umbrella in hand.
At a diner, a church attendee by the name of Ted (Brian Huskey) gripes about his mother to Jesse. Emily (Lucy Griffiths), who works at the diner, suggests Jesse check on her co-worker, Walter, who called in sick. Back in Nairobi, two mysterious men step out of a jeep and enter the church. Jesse stops by Walter's house, finding Walter passed out drunk and hearing a woman singing in the shower, he immediately leaves.
In Kansas, a woman named Tulip O'Hare (Ruth Negga) races down the road while fighting a gangster. Their fight continues in the back seat as the car snakes its way through a corn field; careening to a stop outside a farmhouse, Tulip kills the gangster and grabs a map from his jacket. She receives a text alerting her that more people are coming for her and enlists a boy and girl from the farmhouse to help make a bazooka out of metal cans and army men. Tulip hides the kids in a cellar and they hear mayhem and destruction above ground. They emerge to find a helicopter crashed in their yard with army men impaled in the dead pilot's head.
Cassidy, whose guts lie around him in a crater in a nearby cornfield, lures a cow in and devours it. At Quincannon Meat & Power, Betsy admits to Jesse that Donnie beats her, but insists that she enjoys the abuse as part of their sex life. Meanwhile, in Russia, police investigate a church that has been struck by the “comet.” A witness tells police that the Magister exploded in the middle of mass. The two mysterious men who were investigating in Kenya enter the church and shut the doors.
Jesse stops by the Root house and meets Eugene (Ian Colletti), whose face is grotesquely disfigured. Eugene worries that God doesn't want him at church because of what he did and wonders if some deeds are too evil to be forgiven, to which Jesse assures Eugene that God forgives him. Afterwards, Jesse drinks at a local bar, where he meets Cassidy. Donnie strides into the bar with his friends and punches Jesse for talking to Betsy. Donnie threatens to beat Chris for speaking to Jesse, for which Jesse takes down Donnie and his friends. Sheriff Root tells Jesse to stop, but Jesse assures him, "almost done Sheriff", and concludes by breaking Donnie's arm. Jesse sits in a jail cell with Cassidy, who Sheriff Root believed to be Jesse's accomplice. Jesse's released on bail and the two men shake hands before parting ways.
Emily picks up Jesse from jail and drives him to the church, where Jesse informs her that he's quitting and will make an announcement on Sunday. Inside the church, Jesse sits on a pew, where he decides to ask for God's help one last time. Getting no response, he lights up a cigarette. The doors creak open and the pews move. A supernatural shadow, which reveals itself to be the "comet", approaches Jesse and slams him to the ground.
Jesse wakes up three days later on Sunday morning, with Emily informing him that Cassidy found Jesse passed out at the church and has since moved into the attic, carrying out basic maintenance on the church itself. As Jesse walks to church, Ted harangues him about his mother again. Jesse tells Ted in a stern, otherworldly voice, "Be brave, tell her the truth, open your heart." Ted rushes off, repeating Jesse's words like a mantra. Tulip enters All Saints, where Cassidy, too, is attending Jesse's sermon. Jesse, who initially set out to quit, instead tells his congregation that he's going to make things right. Meanwhile, Ted goes to his mother's retirement home, asking her to treat him with kindness. He unbuttons his shirt and takes out a knife. "Now I have to open my heart to you," he says. He cuts his chest open, removes his heart and falls dead on the table as his mother screams.
One of the mystery men (Tom Brooke) from Russia and Kenya eats a tea bag while waiting in his car. "It's here," his partner (Anatol Yusef) informs him. They cross the street and stand at the foot of the driveway to All Saints Congregational.
Production
Conception
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg discovered Preacher in Point Grey Secondary School, with Rogen recalling that "Evan's brother had read Preacher, and then Evan gave it to me to read [...]." He insisted that the book had "everything", noting that "It was funny, it was dramatic, it had a lot of action and violence, it was horrific at times, perverted at times, very real at times." Rogen would hang out in comic book stores in L.A. recommending the title to people who came in, and once Superbad (2007) was released, Preacher became their dream project. Rogen stated, "Ever since we had any clout in any way, shape, or form—not that we ever had that much ever, because it took a fucking decade, basically—but we tried to get it turned into something," while adding that they, [...] wanted to be the ones who translated it in some way."
Preacher institutes elements, from Rogen's perspective, from Ingmar Bergman's The Devil's Eye (1960), Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981), Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), and Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men (2007), as well as the films of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. While developing The Green Hornet (2011), they were introduced to producer Neal Moritz, with whom Rogen and Goldberg built a close relationship with. Eventually Mortiz started controlling the property, though it eventually fell into the laps of Rogen and Goldberg due to the unsuccessful attempts at an adaption on Moritz's part. Goldberg admitted that the initial plan was for a Band of Brothers (2001)-esque 10-part miniseries, though the state of cable television at that time meant they had to abandon that idea.
They claimed that they had considered the idea of a movie, but never actively pursued it beyond once such occasion, as after selling the screenplay for Superbad (2007), Rogen and Goldberg tried unsuccessfully to pitch studios a Preacher adaptation. During the release of Pineapple Express (2008), Rogen commented, "I remember we had a meeting with whoever controlled the property at the time. We showed them the fight from Pineapple Express, to show them that we can execute action and comedy in some capacity." In terms of the preferred platform of adaption, Rogen acknowledged, "We would have taken it in any form we could get", while the overriding thought between him and Goldberg was that they didn't wish for anyone else adapting Preacher".
In October 2013, Rogen and Goldberg asked Breaking Bad writer and producer Sam Catlin to work with them as showrunner on a potential televised adaptation of Preacher, before giving him a copy of the source material. By Rogen's account, both Goldberg and himself "[...] pitched the comic. We didn't even talk about what we were going to do. We just pitched the comic, panel-for-panel of what happens in the comic" to Catlin in the lobby of the television network. Catlin described it as, "[...] incredible, amazing, over-the-top, profane, irreverent [...]", though he was unsure as to how a potential television show could occur given its content. He also acknowledged the importance of Breaking Bad in the development of Preacher, by suggesting "[...] I don't think people would have been willing to take a chance on Preacher if there had not been a Breaking Bad. It was one of those groundbreaking shows that paved the way for what is possible on TV."
On November 16, 2013, it was announced that AMC was developing a TV series based on the DC Vertigo comic book series Preacher. On November 18, 2013, it was revealed that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were developing the series pilot with Sam Catlin, and that it would be distributed by Sony Pictures Television. On February 6, 2014, AMC ordered a pilot script to be written by Rogen and Goldberg, and confirmed Catlin would serve as showrunner. On December 3, 2014, AMC ordered the pilot of Preacher, directed by Rogen and Goldberg and written by Catlin, to be filmed.
On September 9, 2015, AMC ordered 10 one-hour episodes, with an expected premiere date in mid-2016. Joel Stillerman, president of original programming and development for AMC and SundanceTV, stated, "[Ennis]' Preacher is, above all, about great characters – something we look for in all of our series. The fact that it is also darkly funny, has some great supernatural elements, and takes us on an incredible adventure is just the icing on the cake", while adding, "The incredible creative team behind this show [...] made a pilot that completely blew us away, and we know the series will satisfy and surprise fans of the comics, and captivate fans of great TV everywhere".
Writing