The Untold Truth Of The Boys Movie That Never Happened

Before Amazon Prime Video's "The Boys" dished up love sausages, Herogasm, and exploding heads, a long-term plan involved the production of a movie about the likes of Billy Butcher, Hughie Campbell, and Homelander. Several big stars circled the project, while "The Other Guys" and "Anchorman" director Adam McKay pushed hard to make it a reality. Ultimately, Hollywood held up the crucifix to this idea, believing that an R-rated, smug-as-a-mug comic book movie could never work. (By the way, "Deadpool" says hi and thanks for all the chimichangas that $782.6 million bought him in 2016!)

Considering how successful the show is, even if "The Boys" changed things from the comics, it proved to be a wise decision to go the streaming route in the end. That said, all us non-Supes are curious creatures, and we wonder what could have been had "The Boys" reached the big screen back in the day. Numerous questions reverberate, such as, Would a film have secured the talents of Simon Pegg and Russell Crowe for the roles of Hughie and Butcher respectively? What budget challenges did the filmmakers face? And would it wrap up neatly as a trilogy? Well, it's a good thing there are answers available here. So let's head back to the not-so-distant past of the early 2010s to find out more about "The Boys" movie that never, ever happened.

"The Boys" co-creator Garth Ennis loves to write wild and wacky stories. Believe it or not, but the disturbances in the world of Hughie Campbell are far from the weirdest to spill out of Ennis' pen. One of Ennis' most notable works, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon, remains "Preacher." The comic book series follows preacher Jesse Custer who becomes possessed by an entity known as Genesis that gives him the uncanny power to command others. With dark, humorous stories that venture into blasphemous territory and even a character named Arseface, it's safe to say that "Preacher" doesn't possess what one would call "mainstream appeal."

Ennis knew that, too. Appearing at Wizard World 2009 (via FilmBuffOnline), the writer explained how "The Boys" movie would be easier to make than "Preacher." "With 'Preacher,' if you start pulling cards out of the structure, it collapses pretty quickly," he said. "It's a 2,000-page story, and nearly all the elements rely on other elements." Ennis added, "With 'The Boys,' you can just isolate those five characters and you can have a very simple story about people who deal with superheroes. ... You would probably have to lose a lot of the commentary on history, politics and corporate culture that you get in 'The Boys,' but it really is just a story about a team of guys who beat the crap out of superheroes." Neither "Preacher" nor "The Boys" received movies in the end. Both of them were turned into television shows, though, with "Preacher" running for four seasons on AMC.

The start of the 2010s burst with opportunity for filmmakers to hop on board the comic book movie train. "The Dark Knight" secured over $1 billion in 2008, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe laid out a promising road map for future success, so everyone in showbiz wanted a piece of the action — including Samuel Bayer, who directed the 2010 "A Nightmare on Elm Street" reboot at the behest of Michael Bay.

Bayer carved out a reputation for himself as an in-demand director for commercials and music videos, helming productions for artists such as Nirvana, David Bowie, and The Rolling Stones. However, he held a special place in his heart for comics, with a particular project catching his eye. Speaking to ShockTillYouDrop.com in 2010, Bayer explained how he'd held conversations for other films to direct after "A Nightmare on Elm Street." He said, "There's one comic book I really dig that I want to go after that's badass. I'd like to get it, it's called 'The Boys.' It's about a group of mercenaries and their job is to kick the s*** out of superheroes who get out of line. It doesn't get any better than that."

At the time, the rights to the "The Boys" movie sat at Columbia Pictures. "Clash of the Titans" and "Destroyer" scribes Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay had been hired to write the script. Bayer didn't get the gig, though, returning to directing commercials and music videos after "A Nightmare on Elm Street."

In 2008, Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay signed on to write "The Boys" movie, which was set to be produced by Neal H. Moritz of "The Fast and the Furious" fame. The search for a director took a few years, though, with Adam McKay eventually confirming his official involvement in August 2010.

Chatting to Variety, the filmmaker discussed how "The Boys" would be his next project after wrapping "The Other Guys" and said the script wasn't too far from going leaving the page to the cameras. "They already have a script and we're doing a rewrite on it so hopefully getting the whole thing into shape in the fall with maybe a shoot happening in January," he said.

The deadline of January 2011 came and went, but McKay's name remained attached to the project for years thereafter. By this point, Seth Rogen, who eventually produced the Amazon Prime series, had also taken a pass at the script and become involved in its development. There were fears that "The Boys" movie was dead when Columbia Pictures dropped out of making it in 2012. However, shortly after Columbia dropped the project, McKay said on his X (formerly known as Twitter) account that Paramount Pictures was in the mix. Despite the setbacks, the signs looked optimistic that "The Boys" would be one of the movies that escaped development hell. Oh, how wrong everyone was about that ....

When fans think about how Hughie from "The Boys" should really look, there's no getting past the fact that the comic book version is the spitting image of English actor Simon Pegg. Even the comic's co-creator, Darick Robertson, confirmed that the character is inspired by the "Shaun of the Dead" star. In a way, it was a genius move since it all but primed the audience to accept Pegg if he appeared in "The Boys" adaptation; there would be no outrage or endless fan petitions to find another actor here. The question is, was he considered for the role at all?

The movie's co-writer Phil Hay told Collider that he was uncertain of Pegg's involvement but that everyone involved wished for it to happen. Director Adam McKay echoed a similar sentiment when he spoke to MTV News. "Everyone knows Simon Pegg can take Hughie if he wants," the filmmaker said. "I don't know what his schedule is like, though."

Had the project developed further, it would have been interesting to see if Pegg would have been formally contacted to play Wee Hughie in the live-action movie. Nonetheless, he still appears in "The Boys" show as Hugh Campbell Sr. — a part earmarked for him by showrunner Eric Kripke to honor the comic book connection between Pegg and Hughie.

As news of a potential "The Boys" movie circulated throughout Tinseltown, more actors and filmmakers opened up about the project. Most — if not all — of them expressed excitement about the potential of the film, including Rob Corddry, who was riding a wave of success in 2010. The actor made a name for himself after his stint on "The Daily Show" and continued to build a wide-spanning filmography to make several generations of performers blush.

In the promotional tour for Steve Pink's "Hot Tub Time Machine" in March 2010, Corddry spoke to "The Flickcast" about the type of roles he would like to tackle in the future, and brought up a film adaptation of "The Boys" out of his own volition. "I just read a script based on a comic book called 'The Boys,' which is great, and I just loved it," he said.

Corddry didn't reveal the name of the character he hoped to play in the movie, but it's likely that he must have been considered for the role of Hughie Campbell at some point. The actor shares a resemblance to the comic book version of Wee Hughie, and it isn't too difficult to imagine him as a contender for the gig — especially if the No. 1 choice Simon Pegg had said no to it.

Though Russell Crowe hated being a part of "Gladiator," that mega-budget blockbuster turned him into a global superstar and a highly coveted actor in show business. Expectedly, whenever a major part in Hollywood presented itself, Crowe's name remained at the top of every list for consideration. It should come as no surprise, then, that he was eyed for the role of the British bruiser Billy Butcher in the in-development film adaptation of "The Boys."

Discussing the topic of Butcher's casting in 2011, director Adam McKay told MTV News: "I've sat with some people. I really like the idea of Russell Crowe for Butcher. We met and had kind of an interesting meeting." One can only imagine how Crowe would have delivered Butcher's gruff and filthy lines here, and any footage of a reading or his audition would likely break the internet faster than Kim Kardashian did with pictures of her derrière. Also, it's fascinating to note that though this casting never materialized, another New Zealand-born actor, Karl Urban, secured the gig later on.

"The Boys" film didn't happen for Crowe, but he still ventured into the comic book movie terrain in Zack Snyder's "Man of Steel," Taika Waititi's "Thor: Love and Thunder," and J.C. Chandor's "Kraven the Hunter."

"The Boys" deals with an endless array of action-packed and superpower-charged sequences. Homelander alone possesses super strength, heat vision, and the power of flight, so to bring him to life on the big screen would be like tackling Superman — albeit a more tyrannical and evil version. For any studio or production company, the main thought here is, How much will this cost to make?

Speaking to Collider in 2013, screenwriters Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay discussed how "The Boys" movie had been closer to entering production than most people realized. However, the budget proved to be the biggest sticking point. "It's really been figuring out exactly what the budget's gonna be," Manfredi said. "All of these different things go into how much money can you spend and still make it 'The Boys'?" Hay also mentioned another important aspect for consideration. "If this was gonna be $5 million you could make it hard R, you could just do whatever you want," he said, hinting at a potential compromise.

Remember, this was a time before the likes of "Deadpool" and "Joker" demonstrated to studios that R-rated comic book movies could be lucrative and highly profitable. The most recent R-rated comic book movies in 2013 were the "Kick-Ass" films and "Dredd," which famously flopped at the box office. Resultantly, no executive in town was about to greenlight an expensive, CGI-heavy film for an adult-only audience (what about those Happy Meals and toy lines, right?). There had to be a middle ground, which might have been impossible given the source material.

Creatives understood the potential of a film version of "The Boys," since it had the ability to subvert the traditional superhero tropes of the time and do something unique in the comic book movie space. As per Rolling Stone, one of the major plans involved turning "The Boys" into a movie trilogy, which would have been overseen by Adam McKay. The first film's script was completed as were animatic sequences to showcase as proofs of concept. However, the production never went past that point.

"The Boys" artist and co-creator Darick Robertson appreciated what McKay conjured up back in the day. "He was doing really cool stuff," Robertson said. "It just came down to it being 2008, not 2018. I just don't think they were ready for it yet."

Considering all the storylines covered by the show, a trilogy makes complete sense when you look at the source material. There are too many characters, outrageous plot points, and twists to cover in 90 to 120 minutes. So a standalone film just wouldn't cut it here.

Everyone involved in "The Boys" movie holds their own theories and beliefs of why it didn't pan out in the end. However, few were as close to the project as Adam McKay, who worked on the film for a number of years. In an interview with IndieWire in 2015, he touched upon his lengthy experience on "The Boys" and how no one in Hollywood was biting.

"I was trying to do Garth Ennis' 'The Boys' at one point, and I took it to every studio, every production financing place in town," he said. "And they were always like, 'No.' I had this crazy pre-viz reel that I'd done, and it was insane, like superheroes doing cocaine. And they all said, lazily, 'So it's like "Watchmen"?'" He said he came to the conclusion that no one was prepared to take a chance on "The Boys," so he upped the weirdness of the pitches.

McKay's "Watchmen" comments intrigue but aren't surprising in the least. In 2009, Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" arrived as a darker, more adult take on comic book heroes. Yet despite going on to some notoriety and gaining plenty of fans, it flopped at the box office, only making $185.4 million from a $130 million budget. Expectedly, it scared off studios from producing anything with the words "mature" and "superheroes" for years to come, with "The Boys" movie suffering as a result. Be sure to read all about the history of Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" when you're done here.

After "The Boys" ran the gauntlet in Hollywood, the property landed squarely in the laps of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Eric Kripke. From 2015, Kripke worked on turning it into a show, unveiling his magnum opus to the world in 2019. Appearing on "Hot Ones" in 2022, Rogen discussed how the series wasn't his nor Goldberg's first rodeo with "The Boys," since they had been the original pair to have pitched it as a movie.

Rogen spoke about how he and Goldberg were major fans of Garth Ennis' work (they also developed the "Preacher" show), so when Ennis' new comic, "The Boys," came out, they bought it and instantly thought it would be the perfect story to be adapted into a film. They pitched it to producer Neal H. Moritz and Sony, who all agreed to buy the rights to the property and make a movie. However, they proceeded to soldier on without Rogen or Goldberg's involvement for many years.

"They did not hire us to write it or produce it in any way, shape, or form." Rogen said with a laugh. "They hired other people to do that, and after like a decade of those people just like f***ing it up in some way, shape, or form, it came back to us basically, and then we turned it into the TV show."

It's an open secret that "The Boys" on Amazon plans to end with its fifth season. Of course, there's still "Gen V" and the endless possibilities of spinoffs on the table, but the curtain call nears for this current iteration of the beloved anti-superhero series. Actor Laz Alonso, who plays Mother's Milk on the show, has an idea of how it could end, though: With a film.

Speaking on the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast, Alonso said: "I've been unsuccessfully pitching that we end the show with a feature film to Eric [Kripke]. Like, make the last episode of Season 5 the cliffhanger and announce the film that we have been filming since the beginning of the series."

Alonso's co-star Antony Starr, who portrays Homelander, added his support to the idea, saying: "Okay, I'm down." Alonso asked the crowd if they liked his suggestion and received a chorus of cheers in response. He joked that everyone should flood Kripke's X account with messages and demand the film. Why is the plug being pulled on the popular Amazon Prime Video show, though? Read on to find out the real reason "The Boys" is ending with Season 5.