Looks like solid buzz from Black Swan is doing good things for director Darren Aronofsky. He has recently been attached as a candidate for the new Superman film (guided by Christopher Nolan), and now Newsarama has a rumor that the visionary director is “being targeted” to direct Preacher, Columbia Pictures’ adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s sprawling comic series.The story follows a preacher named Jesse Custer who becomes possessed with the offspring of a demon and an angel, an entity called Genesis. Custer goes on a quest to literally find God, who left Heaven when Genesis was formed. Imbued with the power of God, Custer reconnects with an old girlfriend and meets an alcoholic Irish vampire (?!) who join him on his quest. It’s one of the most ridiculous, blasphemous, and surprisingly entertaining stories I’ve ever read.

Preacher has had one of the most difficult story-to-screen journeys in recent history, and a film version still isn’t guaranteed: originally set up back in 1998 with Rachel Talalay (Tank Girl) directing, the project moved to Kevin Smith’s View Askew Productions (with James Marsden attached as Jesse Custer) before falling into development hell. In 2006, HBO was interested in adapting the comics into a TV series and hired Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil) to write and produce.

Though his filmography might indicate otherwise, Johnson apparently pitched the company on developing each comic into a one-hour episode, wanting to literally use the comics as storyboards and translate it shot-for-shot to the small screen. HBO balked because of the religious controversy inherent in the story, and the project moved back into the film world, picked up by Sony/Columbia in 2008 with Sam Mendes (American Beauty) set to direct and John August (Big Fish) writing. That incarnation also fell through when Mendes was signed to direct the newest edition of the now-delayed James Bond series for MGM. August’s script is reportedly still being used, and producer Neil Moritz hopes to shoot the film in 2011.

So now Aronofsky is reportedly on the shortlist for both Superman and Preacher. Which do you think better suits him? Would you rather see the Requiem for a Dream director continue with original projects, or tackle one of these adaptations?

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John August, writer of The Nines and Corpse Bride, has a blog which he updates now and again with interesting stuff about screenwriting and the movie industry in general. Today he updated it with a post which describes how he and Jodran Mechner (writer, game designer) pitched the Prince of Persia movie to studios. In order to sell their idea to the studio executives they used footage from the actual game, which he says isn’t common, but it worked.

Most movie pitches don’t involve video, but with PoP, most of the studio executives weren’t familiar with the game at all, so it became an important way to introduce them to both the franchise and the world. As Jordan notes in his post, this trailer doesn’t really tell the story of the movie, but it does give a sense of the characters and style: the dashing prince’s acrobatics, the devoted priestess/princess, the dagger with its time-reversing slickness.

Jordan and I pitched seven studios over two days. Each time, the presentation was pretty much identical.

1. Introductions. Apologies for keeping us waiting. (1 minute)
2. John hyping Jordan’s prestigious videogame background. (1:00)
3. Play the video. (2:10)
4. Jordan describes the world of the Persian empire, using artwork. (:30)
5. John pitches Prince Dastan, using artwork of him. (:30)
6. John and Jordan alternate pitching story, introducing character/prop artwork as new things come up. (6:00)
7. Questions about story, tone and scale. “Somewhere between Pirates and Raiders. It’s not Lawrence of Arabia.”(3:00)
8. Promises that they’ll follow up. (1:00)

Altogether, we could get through the pitch in less than 20 minutes. Disney liked it, and sent us to Jerry Bruckheimer’s company, who bought it from Jordan. The film comes out next May.

Below is the footage that they used:

August says that we should be getting a trailer for the film shortly, and there have been hints we could see one next month.

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