After years of being in development, The Boys is finally headed into live-action, and another off-the-wall comic book adaptation is partially to thank.
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ComicBook.com was part of a conference call involving Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who will serve as executive producers of Amazon’s television adaptation of The Boys. As Goldberg put it, his and Rogen’s work on AMC’s Preacher – which will soon debut its third season – helped pave the way for The Boys to become a reality.
“Without the success of Preacher I can’t imagine they ever would have considered it for a minute.” Goldberg explained. “Even though Preacher is by far the craziest most reality-bending, genre-bending thing, The Boys is much more grounded in reality but it is equally insane in its own unbelievably gritty, unforgiving analysis of like societal flaws through this very different story. Without any doubt, there’s no chance they would have even considered letting us do this, nor would they consider anyone doing it I would imagine without Preacher, because it just proved this crazy can happen.”
The Boys is based on the Dynamite Entertainment series of the same name, which is created by Preacher creator Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The television adaptation will be created by Rogen, Goldberg, and Supernatural and Timeless alum Eric Kripke, with the pilot episode directed by 10 Cloverfield Lane‘s Dan Trachtenberg.
The cast of The Boys will include Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid as Wee Hughie, Karen Fukuhara as Female, Laz Alonso as Mother’s Milk, and Elisabeth Shue as Madelyn Sitwell. Additionally, Erin Moriarty will be playing Starlight, a character tied to the superhero group The Seven, alongside Antony Starr as Homelander, Dominique McElligott as Queen Maeve, Jesse T. User as A-Train, Chase Crawford as The Deep, and Nathan Mitchell as Black Noir.
A live-action take on the comic book series has been in development for a long time. Adam McKay, who directed Anchorman and The Big Short, first developed a film adaptation of The Boys in 2010 and shopped it around from Columbia to Paramount. But the project needed to find the right place in terms of budget, and it appears to have finally found its place for television audiences, partially with the help of Preacher.
Are you excited to see Rogen and Goldberg bring their Preacher style to The Boys? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Preacher‘s third season will debut this Sunday, June 24th, at 10/9c on AMC. The Boys is set to begin production soon, and will be released sometime in 2019 on Amazon.
