Good news for fans of Garth Ennis’ ultra-violent and exceedingly funny new comic book, The Boys: the planned film adaptation has found two writers.
Potentially bad news for fans of Garth Ennis’ ultra-violent and exceedingly funny new comic book, The Boys: The two writers who are adapting it for the big screen wrote Aeon Flux.
Still, everyone’s gotta start somewhere right? And we’re sure that Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi are perfect matches for The Boys, a brutally funny tale of hard-as-nails CIA agents whose mission is to keep an eye on the activities of superheroes and, if necessary, terminate with extreme prejudice.
The Wildstorm comic, which is drawn by Darick Robertson, is not even a third of the way through its run, but it’s already a bit of a fan favourite. And Empire is keen to see how Hay and Manfredi will handle the, ahem, fruitier elements of the source material.
Will they include the storyline where Tek-Knight can’t stop himself from, well, shagging everything that moves (and some things that don’t?) Will Butcher, the lead character, say the ‘C’ word with as much gleeful regularity? Will Wee Hughie, the innocent Scottish Simon Pegg-a-like who is our eyes and ears in the world of The Boys, split with his girlfriend in such memorably violent fashion?
All these questions and more will hopefully be revealed soon. The hiring of Hay and Manfredi is a sure sign that producer Neal H. Moritz and Columbia Pictures are keen to get this one before the cameras asap – perhaps they’ve been galvanised by the success of the similarly risky Wanted.
But we can’t help but be a little cautious by the hiring of Hay and Manfredi. We’re sure that the finished version of Aeon Flux bore scant resemblance to their initial script, but still… that’s a doozy to have on your CV. In their defence, though, they also wrote the decent teen drama, Crazy/Beautiful.
No director has yet been hired, but that can only be a matter of time. Watch this space.