Samuel Bayer wants in on THE BOYS!

By Matt Holmes /

Samuel Bayer, who made his directorial debut with the upcoming remake of Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street has not only told /film that he has no intention of returning for a Freddy sequel, but he has also spilled to Shock Till You Drop exactly what he wants to make instead. And well, I'm hoping Bayer is as talented as the trailer for the Nightmare suggests because the source material he wants to adapt is kinda special. It's Garth Ennis' wonderful graphic novel The Boys!!!

"Yeah, I€™m catching my breath but I€™ve been offered some stuff. There€™s one comic book I really dig that I want to go after that€™s bad-ass. I€™d like to get it, it€™s called The Boys. It€™s about a group of mercenaries and they€™re job is to kick the shit out of superheroes who get out of line. It doesn€™t get any better than that. In the world of The Boys, superheroes are scumbags. My youngest brother is a comic book historian and he introduced me to a lot of graphic novels like €œThe Dark Knight.€ There are some great books I don€™t think people have tapped into yet".
Columbia Pictures have owned for the past two years... The Boys is an anti-hero superhero book, and at it's core was so against the caped crusaders and the men of steel that Wildstorm (an imprint of Batman/Superman's home DC Comics) dropped the series after just six issues, wanting no further part of it. The Boys is unique, it pushed comic book boundaries (and would do the same for the superhero genre if made) and is hilariously over-the-top insane, with deep dark humour and violent scenes. It is, in a word, awesome. Columbia originally hired Neal H. Moritz (who is also working on a Preacher adaptation) to develop the comic book property into a feature. He would later hire Aeon/Flux and The Tuxedo screenwriters Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay to come up with a script but 2009 went by without any word on it, so I presumed that particular adaptation attempt was done. So it could be the perfect time for Bayer to start pitching ideas to Columbia. And of course... it goes without saying Simon Pegg HAS to play Hughie Campbell - the character modeled on himself. We would accept no substitutes, right?

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