Speaking to fellow comic writer Mark Millar on Millar Time, Ennis discusses past opportunities to have Preacher and The Boys adapted as movies. Ennis confirms that a script for a The Boys movie was written by Adam McKay, the writer/director behind movies including Anchorman, The Big Short and Don’t Look Up. This version of the story seemingly changed the location of the comic’s climactic battle from the White House to the Farallon Islands.
Sadly, the 2008 project wasn’t taken further than scripting and demo animatics (according to Rolling Stone), despite McKay’s intentions to turn The Boys into a film trilogy. Thankfully, film fans’ loss was Amazon’s gain, with the franchise eventually making it to the small screen a decade later.
Garth Ennis wanted The Boys ‘ movie script to include great white sharks in its final battle.
The Boys’ Movie Script Changed Its Climactic Battle
A Planned Trilogy Sadly Didn’t Make It to the Screen
While today’s TV adaptation makes its own changes to Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comics, the movie made a particularly significant alteration. Ennis reveals that the movie’s final battle would have been set in San Francisco’s Farallon Islands, aka ‘the Devil’s Teeth.’ Ennis notes that due to his own trip shark-watching on the Farallon Islands, he’s familiar with the location, and was disappointed that the movie’s fight scene didn’t make use of the vicious predators. Ennis states:
That effort to do The Boys got as far as a script being written. And it was extraordinary, because the final battle was in the Farallon Islands. Most people don’t know where the Farallon Islands are, but I do because I’ve been there. They’re about four hours off the Californian coast. … It’s mostly known for its population of great white sharks. I knew this because I was there hoping to see said sharks. They did not show up. But in the script, the final battle is in the Farallon Islands, and there’s not a single shark. And you think, ‘Well, you’ve missed a trick there, pal.’
It’s unclear which of the comic story’s battles (if any) would have taken place at the location. The comic’s last conflict that could be called a ‘battle’ sees Homelander’s army of Supes carry out a coup on the United States, with the villain taking up residence in the White House. Butcher confronts him there, only for fellow ‘hero’ Black Noir to make his entrance, leading to a blood-soaked showdown that only one character survives.
This battle is near the end of the comic story, making it less likely that it’s how the first movie in an intended trilogy would end, however comic adaptations have always taken huge liberties with the source material, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the definitive Homelander vs Butcher vs Black Noir battle would move from the White House lawn to the Farallon Islands (especially because the location would undoubtedly be cheaper than creating a believable replica of the White House.)
The World Wasn’t Ready for a Boys Movie in 2008
At Least According to Co-Creator Darick Robertson
Coming out around 2008 would have made any The Boys trilogy a contemporary of the MCU’s Incredible Hulk and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, as well as the similarly dark comic adaptation Wanted. This puts the project in the very early days of Marvel’s shared cinematic universe, before superhero movies truly dominated pop culture in the way they do today. This likely hurt the movie trilogy’s chances, since the targets of its satire weren’t as well known. That’s the view of co-creator Darick Robertson, who told Rolling Stone:
I wouldn’t change how it worked out, because the show is amazing. But [McKay] was doing really cool stuff. It just came down to it being 2008, not 2018. I just don’t think they were ready for it yet.
While The Boys ‘ Darick Robertson doubts the world was ready for its irreverent superhero satire, 2008 was the same year that Leslie Nielsen, Pamela Anderson and Kevin Hart starred in the parody Superhero Movie , while Will Smith’s Hancock put an adult spin on the genre.
It’s unlikely any movie would have been quite as provocative as the comics, though Ennis does recall that it was still cut from the same cloth, and that, “I think it had some dirty stuff in it.” However, just because the Boys movie wasn’t made doesn’t mean that it didn’t benefit its creators. Reflecting on Preacher‘s long journey to the screen, Ennis states that his project existing in cinematic limbo led to “Steve and I splitting a nice check and thinking, ‘Well, if this goes on, no complaints.’ There’s a lot to be said for it.”
While it would be fascinating to see 2008’s take on The Boys as a movie trilogy, fans are unlikely to be too disappointed, given how popular and long-lived Amazon’s TV show has become, with multiple spin-offs already in existence and more to come, including a prequel series set in the 1950s. Beginning publication in 2006, The Boys was always destined to make a splash, but the extra decade allowed it to truly grab mainstream culture by debuting in the era of superhero obsession and big-budget TV shows.
