A few years ago Adam McKay (Anchorman, Ant-Man) was furiously attempting to launch a big screen version of Garth Ennis' violent superhero comic, The Boys. He was never able to get it off the ground and it bounced around studios for a while before vanishing, but could it be time for a revival on the small screen? Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg already have Garth Ennis' Preacher headed to AMC, and now they may be looking to take on The Boys next.
The story comes from Birth.Movies. Death., who say Rogen, Goldberg, and Supernatural creator Erik Kripke are shopping the project around to cable networks. Like Preacher, The Boys is definitely for mature (or wildly immature depending on your perspective) audiences only as it deals with the deeply ugly side of superheroics. The basic premise centers on a CIA Black Ops unit tasked with monitoring the superhero community and reining them in if necessary. But this is Garth Ennis we're talking about here, and these "heroes" are hardly good guys. Instead most of them are perverted freaks or insanely dangerous creeps who use their powers for selfish reasons. Ennis used the comic as a way to poke fun at Marvel and DC, with disturbing twists on some of their most popular characters.
The Boys ran for 72 issues exactly as Ennis mapped it out to be, so if it went to TV there would be a definite end point. Plus, this would be a much easier sell for the small screen than asking some studio to invest in an R-rated comic book movie. Maybe if Deadpool is a huge hit that could change, but TV seems like the way to go. There's always the possibility of Rogen and AMC collaborating again, but for now consider all of this a rumor.
