1 Oscar-Winner’s Weird ‘The Boys’ Movie Pitch Turned the Producer of ‘Charlie’s Angels’ Into a Supervillain After Original Script Was Rejected for Being Too Dark
- Adam McKay revealed he had pitched a version of The Boys to Judd Apatow which also included Aaron Spelling.
- The Boys’ co-creator and illustrator, Darick Robertson says McKay's approach towards the show was ahead of its time.
- Eric Kripke wanted to create a show where superheroes are celebrities behaving badly.
Filmmaker Adam McKay began his career as a head writer for the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 2001. Following his departure from the show, McKay was known for his collaboration with actor Will Ferrell. The duo worked on movies including Anchorman, The Other Guys, Step Brothers, and more.
In the 2010s, the filmmaker ventured into more dramatic projects, including The Big Short, Don’t Look Up, and Vice. He is regarded as one of the finest filmmakers in the industry who won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay 2016 for The Big Short. The director was also set to adapt The Boys into a trilogy almost sixteen years ago until it was labeled as ‘too dark’.
Judd Apatow rejected Adam McKay’s pitch for The Boys
In an interview with IndieWrite back in 2015, filmmaker Adam McKay revealed that he was trying to adapt Garth Ennis’ The Boys pre-MCU Hollywood, but every studio or production house he went to pitch the story, he was rejected. He explained that he used to pitch the story as ‘superheroes doing cocaine’ to which the studios would say that it was like ‘Watchmen’. McKay noted,
And then eventually I started realizing that no one was going to do it, and I started pitching the craziest aspects of it, embracing the fact that they hated it. The first time I pitched to Judd Apatow, I had about five ideas and one of them was a bunch of runway skate punks who hole up in this abandoned house, watching scraggly TV and smoking pot and doing ecstasy.
Adam McKay continued that the group of punks became transfixed by Charlie’s Angels‘ director Aaron Spelling on the show and declares that Spelling was the root cause of the evil. The group was going to travel cross-country to kill him. The filmmaker said Judd Apatow was not impressed by the storyline so far and said,
That’s not funny. I explained, ‘No, it’s not real; they’re not really going to kill him. The idea is that it’s crucial war; we’ll have funniest stuff on the way, like Slacker. But he really got mad at me, and it was the last time we spoke for about a year.
According to The Boys’ co-creator and illustrator, Darick Robertson, in his interview with The Rolling Stone, McKay had plans to adapt The Boys for a trilogy of movies—the first one went as far as a finished screenplay and even demo animatic of scenes.
The illustrator, however, did clarify that McKay was not successful in getting the movie green-light in a pre-MUC era, adding that if the filmmaker had pitched it a few years later, it might have worked out differently. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg eventually got their heads set on The Boys and later Eric Kripke was finalized as the showrunner.
Eric Kripke says the approach to The Boys was to do a very realistic version of the superhero show
In an interview with THR, showrunner Eric Kripke noted that when he, along with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, started to pitch the show in 2016, and added that they just wanted to do a realistic version of superhero show, where superheroes are celebrities behaving badly. He added,
When Donald Trump got elected, we had a metaphor that said more about the current world. Suddenly, we were telling a story about the intersection of celebrity and authoritarianism and how social media and entertainment are used to promote fascism. We’re right in the eye of the storm.
The showrunner added to the conversation that they write the story close to two years before they air and eventually, they find out that the current news reflects what they’re talking about on the show. He explained that in the first episode of season 4, Homelander played by Antony Starr was on trial adding that the concern is can you convict someone that powerful of a crime?
Kripke noted an individual writes about what they’re scared or pissed off about. He also appreciated that Amazon never tried to censor his political points but he just makes sure that they know what he is going to do next.The Boys and its spinoffs do not have a super-hero powers, adding they’ve got to a level of freedom that it’ll be hard to repeat anywhere.
The Boys is streaming on Prime Video.
