The Boys, a comic book series written and created by Garth Ennis (Preacher, Judge Dredd, Hellblazer) and co-created, designed and illustrated by Darick Robertson (Justice League, Punisher, Astonishing X-Men: Nightcrawler), has been in and out of production with both Columbia Pictures and Paramount Pictures since 2008.
Cinemax had agreed to produce the series in 2016 before production switched to Amazon Video in 2017, where an eight episode first season began filming in 2018.
The Boys tell the story of an early 2000s world where superheroes do exist and have achieved near-mythological celebrity status. As this is a Garth Ennis story, these superheroes are pretty much out of control when they aren’t fighting crime and they leave in their wake a path of destruction that would put a 70s rock band to shame. These supers are more like a “wound way too tight on booze and drugs” version of comic book Tony Stark instead of the cleaned up version found in the Marvel movies.
The most well known of these supers are “The Seven”, which are patterned after DC’s Justice League, though in the picture of them (shown above), the two on the right, The Homelander (Antony Starr) and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) are leaning a bit more on the Marvel look, if you know what I mean. They work for Vought International (Vought-American in the comics), who not only sponsors the supers but maybe do slightly more sketchy things with them as well.
The eponymous Boys are a group of vigilantes run by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), who do everything they can to try and keep the supers in check so they aren’t tearing up everything — and everyone — in sight. Helping him are “Wee” Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), Female (Karen Fukuhara), and Frenchie (Tomer Kapon). Simon Pegg plays Hughie’s father, but in the early stages of production in 2008 he was up to play Hughie because the comic character was drawn to look exactly like Simon.
A teaser was released at New York Comic Con on 5 October, 2018, and is shown below. The teaser shows Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue), Senior Vice President of Hero Management, giving the standard corporate bullet points about how super their supers are while, at the end, The Boys look on. (Note: the end of the teaser could be consider NSFW, so caution is advised.)
The supes are going down. #TheBoysTV debuts in 2019. pic.twitter.com/W8YPLnY2yW
— PrimeVideo (@PrimeVideo) October 7, 2018
On 17 April Amazon released a final trailer along with the premiere date of 26 July, 2019. This trailer is found on the Amazon splash page and you can also watch it below. Though it’s not labeled as such, it is full-on Red Band Not Safe For Work goodness, so best to watch it in private. Or not. It’s up to you.
I’ve already got this series set up on my watchlist. And if you’re a fan of out-of-control supers, you should, too.