Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg on going from comedy to comic book action

TORONTO – Famed Canadian comedy collaborators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are going in a new direction these days.

While the “Superbad” duo continue to churn out the raunchy fare their fans have come to love — like the upcoming animated film “Sausage Party” — they’re also producing more dramatic and serious projects.

In 2011, there was the cancer comedy “50/50,” they co-directed the upcoming video game documentary “Console Wars,” and on Sunday they debut their new AMC drama series “Preacher,” based on the ’90s comic book franchise the duo devoured as teens.

“The fact that the goal was not to be funny at all times was actually really freeing in a lot of ways and I think allowed us to try a lot of things that we probably would never have tried in something that was primarily a comedy,” Rogen says of the creative process behind “Preacher,” which marks their first foray into the TV world.

“I think it for sure let us move the camera in ways that we just never would in a comedy or just stylistically or tonally do things that in a movie about idiots who smoke weed you probably wouldn’t be able to do.”

“Preacher” stars Dominic Cooper as Jesse Custer, a criminal-turned-church-leader who finds himself inhabited by a mysterious entity that gives him an unusual power.

Goldberg and Rogen, who co-direct the series, say they’ve been fans of the comic by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon since it came out.

“It was our favourite comic and not only did it match our sensibility but it helped form our sensibility, because we were reading it in high school at the exact same time when we started to do ‘Superbad,'” says Goldberg, Rogen’s childhood friend from Vancouver who’s worked with him on a slew of projects including “The Interview” and “This is the End.”

“‘Superbad’ … was a realistic representation of kids our age and I think it was partially from ‘Preacher,’ just being so honest and bold and not trying to treat the reader like they can’t handle stuff.”

Goldberg and Rogen have been trying to get “Preacher” adapted for about 10 years. Now is the right time for such material because “cable shows are able to support things that have the type of scope of something like ‘Preacher’ and ‘The Walking Dead,'” says Rogen.

“From a sheer financial standpoint it would have been an impossibility, I think, a number of years ago. And I think the (TV) sensibility has shifted much more to that of an independent filmmaking mentality, almost, where they really just want smart, interesting stories.

“They’re not worried about how accessible they are at first glance and they’re not that worried about how easy to understand they are at first glance. They seem much more interested in quality and longevity and making something that people really like over the long term, which is often not how movies are made.”

Goldberg and Rogen deviated partially from the original source material — with the comic creators’ approval — and made sure they had answers for all the mysteries.

“We went very hard on that and we really said, ‘We cannot set up anything that we don’t have the answer for and we can’t imply any mystery that we don’t know what we’re doing,'” says Rogen, “because we were so frustrated with (the ending of ) ‘Lost.'”

Doing more TV is now a “big goal” of theirs.

“You can do things in it you just can’t do in movies. It’s crazy,” says Goldberg.

“In a lot of ways it’s more exciting than movies, I think,” adds Rogen. “It seems like you can take risks that are harder to take in movies.

“It really is an independent film mentality with a blockbuster budget, in some ways, which in movies is really hard if not impossible to obtain.”