'Preacher' best suited to TV, says Sam Mendes

Sam Mendes has said that the proposed Preacher movie adaptation would be a better fit for the small screen.

The Skyfall helmer, who was once attached to the project, admitted that the DC Comics series would work better as an HBO or cable show.

"It's a brilliant graphic novel, I loved it, but a lot of it takes place in the real world and we're surrounded now by fantasy and superhero genre pictures which are full of eye candy," he told Collider.

"Preacher is much more real world, it's more of a Southern Gothic with elements of the fantastic in it; it's a quite difficult thing to balance."

DJ Caruso is the latest director tasked with bringing Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's comic to the big screen, but the project remains in development hell.

Mendes added: "If you look at somewhere between Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead, True Blood - that world of real but fantasy, the two mixed, it's young and sexy and it's got many, many chapters.

"When I saw that it was a possible HBO or a possible cable show, I thought, 'That's a great way to do it', because then you can let it develop gradually, because there's also a huge amount of it."

Frankenweenie screenwriter John August has been working on a script for Preacher, but the movie itself is yet to be greenlit.