studio over the creative direction of the film. Heisserer had turned in his draft of the script but left the film in November, instead to be developed as an HBO series. HBO's Preacher TV series HBO announced in November 2006 adapting Preacher as a one-hour television series, with a pilot episode written by Mark Steven Johnson and directed by Howard Deutch. The project was canceled, when in August 2008 series executive producer Mark Steven Johnson said that the Preacher project was "dead at HBO". AMC later bought the rights for a TV adaptation developed by Sam Catlin, Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen and Neal H. Moritz. Transmetropolitan film Co-creators Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson were approached about making a Transmetropolitan film adaptation, with Patrick Stewart's production company Flying Freehold Productions offering to option the rights in February 2003. Later, the burgeoning Internet boom led to an offer to create an online animated film series, with Stewart providing the voice of Spider Jerusalem, but the project never fully developed. Ellis and Robertson have been rumored to have indicated that they would like to see Tim Roth play Jerusalem, but during a panel at London's Kapow! comic convention Ellis said that there is no chance of seeing Spider Jerusalem on the big screen and Tim Roth was not discussed to play him, and explained that production costs would be too high to bring Transmetropolitan to the big screen. In 2010, Ellis noted in his Twitter account that production discussions have ceased. Death: The High Cost of Living film Since the late 1990s, a film based on Death: The High Cost of Living, to be called Death and Me, was under production at New Line Cinema. Neil Gaiman wrote the screenplay, and also was attached to direct, with Guillermo del Toro as executive producer. Gaiman spent several days on the set of del Toro's film Hellboy II: The Golden Army to get pointers on how to direct. Other than two additional scenes at the beginning (set in a Tibetan monastery and Alaska), and a move from New York City to London for the main setting, the screenplay was relatively unchanged from the comic script. After being in development hell for several years, work on it was renewed in 2007, but quickly derailed again due to the WGA strikes. According to Gaiman, the studio "may still be New Line, but Warner Independent is keen on