Anchorman director tried to adapt The Boys into a movie trilogy 16 years ago, but pre-MCU Hollywood wasn’t into it

“I just don’t think they were ready for it yet”

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Over a decade before the popular Prime Video TV show aired,The Boyswas previously planned to be adapted into a movie trilogy by legendary comedy director Adam McKay, but the studio dropped it before it could even start filming.

The Boys co-creator and illustrator Darick Robertson confirmed this during an interview withRolling Stone, revealing that McKay had plans to adapt The Boys comics back in 2008. “For a while, director Adam McKay was trying to turn The Boys into a trilogy of movies — the first one went as far as a finished screenplay and even demo animatics of scenes,” said Robertson.

However, Robertson revealed that McKay “wasn’t able to get it greenlighted in a pre-MCU Hollywood,” and that if McKay had pitched the idea just a few years later when audiences had a real hunger for superhero content, it might have worked out differently. “[McKay] was doing really cool stuff,” added Robertson, “It just came down to it being 2008, not 2018. I just don’t think they were ready for it yet.”

Mckay is best known for helming classic comedies such as Will Ferrel’s flicksThe Other Guys, Stepbrothers, andAnchorman, and ensemble comedy dramas such as Vice,Don’t Look Up, andThe Big Short.

Alas, the movies never came to fruition, and in 2019 The Boys series was born, which all started when Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg got their hands on the 2006 The Boys comic. After taking the idea toSony, Rogen found his showrunner in Supernatural’s Eric Kripke, and the wheels were put in motion, but that isn’t to say the team didn’t go through a few rewrites of their own including character design. “I wouldn’t change how it worked out because the show is amazing,” added Robertson.

Now on itsfourth season, The Boys TV show is as outrageous as ever with secret Supe Victoria Neuman edging closer to the Oval Office, Billy Butcher supposedly on death’s door, and the Supes as chaotic as can be. In the last episode, titled ‘Wisdom of the Ages’, we witnessed Homelander’s most unhinged moment yet where he turnedthe lab where he spent his childhoodinto a bloodbath, including lasering a man’s penis off and forcing another into a giant oven. Yep.

The Boys Season 4 episodes 1-4 are available to stream on Amazon Prime Video right now with new episodes dropping every season. For more on The Boys, check out the rest of our coverage:

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I am an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering TV and film for SFX and Total Film online. I have a Bachelors Degree in Media Production and Journalism and a Masters in Fashion Journalism from UAL. In the past I have written for local UK and US newspaper outlets such as the Portland Tribune and York Mix and worked in communications, before focusing on film and entertainment writing. I am a HUGE horror fan and in 2022 I created my very own single issue feminist horror magazine.

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