Oscar winner Sam Mendes is to bring the comic book series “Preacher” to the big screen, according to Variety. The director of “American Beauty” will direct an adaptation of a 1990s Vertigo comic series. In other words Sam Mendes is going to direct Garth Ennis' “Preacher for” Columbia Pictures.

In case you’ve missed this one, “Preacher” is a 75-issue series which ran from 1995-2000, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillion about the Reverend Jesse Custer, who becomes inhabited by the offspring of an angel and a demon, and gives him a little power called the Word of God. Custer’s purpose is to bring God back to his reigning of the world and he sets out on a journey across America to find God. His ex-girlfriend, Tulip, and a vampire named Cassidy help him achieve his goal. Mendes's 2002 film “Road to Perdition” was also based on a graphic novel.

This is not the first attempt to make a film out of this story. A previous project was to be produced by Kevin Smith's View Askew and actually got to the casting stage, with James Marsden attached for the title role and a reported budget of $25 million. Then in 2006, HBO enlisted "Daredevil" writer-director Mark Steven Johnson to work on a "Preacher" script as a series or a miniseries. But both projects failed to materialize.

Moreover rumor has it that Columbia is also developing another Ennis comic book creation, “The Boys” as a film.
As far as Sam Mendes is concerned, in 1999 he got the chance to direct his first feature film, “American Beauty” which won 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director for Mendes, which is a rare feat for a first time film director. "Road to Perdition", "Jarhead" and the upcoming "Follies" and "Revolutionary Road" followed.