When we last checked in on the planned adaptation of the Garth Ennis Darrick Robertson created comic book The Boys, it looked as if it was pretty much dead. But Anchorman director Adam McKay tweeted last night that the project is definitely alive, just now at a different studio.

@shaunbarger Actually paramount picked it up and we’re still developing.

— Adam McKay (@GhostPanther) August 15, 2012

The hyper-violent satire charting the adventures of a CIA black ops team tasked with monitoring superhero activity across the globe, and if necessary, deal with them when they would get too out-of-hand was originally published at DC Comics. However, the project was cut loose from the published after a rather high-up executive took an agressive dislike to the book. Ennis and Robertson were able to place the comic over at Dynamite, where it has become the indie publisher’s top seller. 

One of the characters, named Hughie, was based on actor Simon Pegg, and though Pegg stated he was flattered by the depiction, he did state he thought he might be too old to actually play the Hughie if the film ever got off the ground. The project was first set up at Columbia in 2009, and at the time Ennis was pretty enthusiastic about its chances of getting made.

Writers Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay were the ones who primarily worked on the screenplay for Columbia, although Seth Rogen reportedly did a draft as well. Russell Crowe circled the project at one point, considering the lead role of Billy Butcher, but not even that kind of interest could get the film a green light.

Currently, the comic is wrapping up its run this fall, with Ennis reaching the end point Ennis envisioned when he first started developing the comic.

Via Bleeding Cool.

Columbia Pictures has dropped out of developing the comic book series The Boys into a feature film.

Created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson, the hyper-violent satire charted the adventures of a CIA black ops team that was tasked with monitoring superhero activity across the globe, and if necessary, deal with them when they would get too out-of-hand. One of the characters, named Hughie, was based on actor Simon Pegg, and though Pegg stated he was flattered by the depiction, he did state he thought he might be too old to actually play the Hughie if the film ever got off the ground. The project was first set up at Columbia in 2009, and at the time Ennis was pretty enthusiastic about its chances of getting made.

Writers Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay were the ones who primarily worked on the screenplay for Columbia, although Seth Rogen reportedly did a draft as well. Russell Crowe circled the project at one point, considering the lead role of Billy Butcher, but not even that kind of interest could get the film a green light.

Producer Neal Moritz is now free to shop The Boys around to other studios. Time will tell if anyone else will be interested.

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

Russell Crowe is reportedly in discussion to star in Step Brother‘s director Adam McKay’s in development comic book adaptation The Boys.

Crowe would play Billy Butcher, the head of an elite CIA black ops group of misfits who are charged with policing the world’s superhero population and who often fulfill their duty with excessive force. The original comic series was created by writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson as a dark satire on standard superhero fare.

McKay has previously stated that Simon Pegg is already attached to play another one of the Boys, Hughie. Pegg was the visual inspiration for the character in the comics.

Currently, McKay is working on the screenplay for the project.

Via It’s On The Grid.

If you’ve ever flipped through the comic book The Boys, you probably noticed that one of the characters, Wee Hughie, looks alot like British comic actor Simon Pegg. That’s because the series’ creators Garth Ennis and Darrick Robinson have purposely (and with permission) modeled the character on the actor. And now with talk of a possible Boys film, everyone is just assuming that Pegg will be getting the part.

Everyone but Pegg that is.

In a recent twitter post, Pegg stated-

The Boys rocks. Think I’m a little old to play Hughie though. There has been talk of a movie for some time. Would be fun.

Well, I disagree with Pegg. The book, which tells the story of a CIA-sponsored group tasked with policing the world’s superheroes, has only been published since 2006, so it’s not like the character design has been frozen while Pegg has been aging unnaturally fast or anything. He has certainly demonstrated his ability to do a convincing Scottish accent in Star Trek, so that can’t be a concern.

Pegg currently has the John Landis dark comedy Burke And Hare as the next film on his schedule, with a Star Trek sequel lurking unscheduled in the future. The only other project waiting in the wings right now for the actor is The World’s End, which will see him working with frequent co-star Nick Frost and Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright. The film version of The Boys is still being developed, so any maybe Pegg is saying that he’ll be too old to play Hughie if they don’t start shaking a leg.

Via Bleeding Cool.

Many recent comic book to film adaptations have made it seem as if it were relatively easy to translate their four-color superhero stories to the big screen. But as comics writer Garth Ennis relates, that is not always the case. Ennis has two creator-owned series currently optioned by Hollywood studios, Preacher and The Boys, and he sees that one may be easier to realize in celluloid than the other.

The feature film rights for both Preacher and The Boys rest at Columbia Pictures. Currently director Sam Mendes is developing Preacher with scriptwriter John August. Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi are currently working on a Boys screenplay, though no director has been attached to the project.

“I do see a Boys movie as being more viable than a Preacher one,” he stated at the recent WizardWorld Philadelphia comic book convention. “Because with Preacher, if you start pulling cards out of the structure, it collapses pretty quickly. It’s a 2000 page story and nearly all the elements rely on other elements.”

A fan favorite almost immediately upon the publication of its first issue in 1995, Preacher featured a down and out Texas man of the cloth suffused with the power of the offspiring of an angel and demon on a quest to find God, who has abandoned His creation. Joining him were his ex-girlfriend and an Irish vampire. At times vulgar, darkly funny, insightful and satirical, the series ran for 75 issues, including several one-shot specials and a four-issue miniseries. There have already been a few attempts to adapt the series to live action. Although most of them saw the project as a possible film franchise, the most recent attempt was to mount it as a television series for HBO.

Ennis knows the trouble with adapting his own work, as he and artist Steve Dillon, who co-created Preacher with Ennis, took their own pass at writing a screenplay.

“We did cobble together a script once, trying to weed out all the things that would still hang together,” Dillon, also appearing with Ennis, added.

“But you can’t distill the whole story,” conceded Ennis. “And we were only using the first six issues or so. We were doing it early on, too, before Preacher had become the 70-odd issues that it would become.”

The writer does acknowledge that his newer series, The Boys, which centers on a CIA-sponsored group tasked with policing the world’s superheroes, may be easier to get to big screen despite its oft times extreme nature. Ennis created teh series with artist Darick Robertson.

“With The Boys, you can just isolate those five characters and you can have a very simple story about people who deal with superheroes,” Ennis explains. “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.”

“[The Boys have] got a simple high concep,” Dillon points out. “You’ve just done the Hollywood pitch. You can’t do that with Preacher. When people ask me what Preacher is about, I can’t really explain the whole thing.”

“I’ve actually come up with one,” Ennis counters with a laugh. “[Preacher] is Wild At Heart meets Near Dark and then Unforgiven shows up to kill everyone.”