The Boys Was Originally Going to be a Movie in 2008

A decade and a half before The Boys became Prime Video’s biggest show, and a T he Boys season 4 scene was banned in India , there were attempts to turn the comic book it’s based on into a Hollywood movie.

The comic’s unlikely champion? Seth Rogen and his producing partner, Evan Goldberg. According to Rolling Stone , the pair bought its first issue back in 2006 and immediately approached Sony to get a movie made

“We were like, ‘Holy sh**, this is fu*****crazy,’ ” says Rogen. “And that week we went to Sony and we’re like, ‘You guys should make this.’ ” Goldberg adds, “And they were like, ‘We should … with someone else.’ ”

The person Sony preferred was director Adam McKay ( Anchorman, Don’t Look Up ). He was working on not one, but three The Boys movies, and he was close to getting them greenlit.

McKay even had an entire screenplay finished for the first film, along with a demo of animatics for scenes. Sony rejected the pitch and the project was abandoned, however. This was pre-MCU Hollywood, before superhero films were big business.

“I wouldn’t change how it worked out,” The Boys artist Darick Robertson tells Rolling Stone, “because the show is amazing. But he 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.”