**UPDATE: **Mr. Stark is officially going dark. Cooper has signed a deal to play Jesse, and Elizabeth Perkins is on to play Vyla Quinncannon, a scheming businesswoman with a personal connection to the main man.
He’s already familiar to comic-book adaptation fans thanks to his role as Howard Stark in **Captain America: The First Avenger **and the Agent Carter adventures. Yet it appears that Dominic Cooper is closing in on the chance to be a lead in a comic-based project, as The Wrap reports he’s inches away from signing on to play Jesse Custer in Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s TV take on Preacher.
Created by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, the comic-book series revolves around troubled smalltown Texan man of God Custer, who merges with the spawn of a demon and an angel named Genesis. After developing the power to force anyone to do what he says, he heads out with assassin ex-girlfriend Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga, another Marvel veteran from her appearances on Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.) and chatty vampire Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) on a journey to find the negligent deity and discover why he is abandoning mankind.
Assuming Cooper signs, he’ll be starring as Custer in the pilot set to be directed by Rogen and Goldberg and written by Breaking Bad veteran Sam Catlin. Lucy Griffiths, who worked in True Blood, is more officially aboard to play Emily Woodrow, a no-nonsense mother of three who becomes Jesse’s loyal right hand. Assuming the show wins a series order, it’ll likely start screening either later this year or more likely in 2016.