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Garth Ennis' THE BOYS to be adapted for the big screen!!!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Columbia Pictures just nabbed the feature rights to Garth Ennis' THE BOYS, about a group of CIA agents who enforce the law among superheroes... if need be, using lethal force.
I haven't picked up this Ennis series yet (although I love his PREACHER series), but the idea of a real-life look at superheroes interests me... for the same reason I love UNBREAKABLE. I love that kind of shit.
Any fans of the series out there? Who do you want to direct? How about star?
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Best comic series ever. Ennis´ Punisher is gold.
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Or Mel Gibson. They have balls.
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Kinda obvious choice for the main character innit?
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Billy the Butcher NEEDS to be Clive Owen. Wee Hughie was designed to look like Simon Pegg, so that's an easy one. Dennis Haysbert would be a really cool Mother's Milk. Who could be The Frenchman? Jean Reno. Pretty simple there. The Female could be the chick from AUDITION. But as long as this doesn't end up looking like another WANTED... this could be a truly hilarious fucked up flick. But I honestly can't think of a director who could do this justice. Just no fucking American filmmakers please.
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Yeah, you really don't know anything about this book, do you? Check it out though, it's definitely worth reading, especially for those that like Ennis' more extreme and satirical work. This definitely needs a hard r to be anywhere near true to the source material. Personally I'd go for someone like Shane Black, his Kis Kiss Bang Bang convinces me he'd be great for something like this. Kathryn Bigelow would be a good choice too. Gotta be someone who has the guts to be true to the material, and in hollyweirdland finding that is gonna be tough, and getting it past the studio system even tougher.
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Shane Black. Great choice.
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It's good to see someone else publicly declare their love for Unbreakable. What a great movie that totally doesn't get its due. For example, in The Happening trailer, Night is billed as the director of The Sixth Sense and Signs. Signs was good and all but it was no Unbreakable. Meanwhile, I know nothing about The Boys but it sounds bad-ass and if it's bad-ass then I bet Alex Proyas would make a cool movie out of it.
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I'm so fuckin pysched for that one. Black Hole is one of the best comics i've read ever, and if Fincher nails it, I think it has the potential to be his best film. Only problem is the 12 or so other projects he's supposedly got lined up (including 2 other comic adaptations)
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hi. i'm new to this so please be gentle. ever since i've started reading this series i've always wanted to see the following actors cast in a live action feature.
clive owen - butcher
simon pegg - hughie
ving rhames - mothers milk
vincent cassel - the frenchman
ellen page - the female
as long as they get clive owen i'm going to be happy. anyways that's just my two cents. -
I dropped it after 7 or so issues. It's Ennis-by-numbers and tries to raise the gross-out/offensive stakes every issue but just serves to illustrate the law of diminishing returns. The characters and overarching storyline are nowhere near as compelling those in Preacher or Hitman. But the recent Punisher Max series is the shit and probably the best thing that Ennis has ever done. I'd recommend that everyone pick up the trade of The Slavers - unbelievably dark, compelling and blood-chillingly authentic.
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The Slavers is the best crime story i've ever read. I thank fate and chance that he even wrote these arcs. The most consistently great book of the decade.
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That's right.
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The Slavers is one of the best comic stories and stories of any kind i've ever read. so brutal and poetic and sad. Ennis' masterpiece is The Slavers. A profound piece of work. Seriously I cannot believe how good Ennis' run on Punisher Max is, incredible stuff.
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Feb 21, 2008 3:44:31 AM CST
Ennis' greatest work = Punisher MAX - Masterpiece = The Slavers
by messi
That made me hate like never before.
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This would be fuckin awesome if done right. Obviously Pegg has to be in it. I think The Boys is better than Hitman, but not as good as Preacher (obviously).
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I had similar reservations to you, but I feel like the series is really pulling together now. The characters are starting to flesh out and some of the over arching plots are becoming apparent
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its a one joke gorefest, enjoyable but not even in the same league as Ennis' best work on Punisher, Hellblazer and Hitman. Can't wait for the Dan Dare hardcover
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Change a successful GN into a cookie cutter Hollywood actioner...
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homophobia.
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Give them a modest budget and the freedom to indulge. Could be brilliant juvenile fun.
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HBO is the best place for it, but they need to get rid of Mark Steven Johnson. Everything the guy touches turns to shit.
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I'd love to see The Boys as a movie, but looking at how long it has taken for Preacher to become a movie, or series or anything, I doubt it'll ever happen. Even if it does, they'll water it down or change it so completely like they've done with Wanted. I'd also love for Marvel to make a Punisher movie based directly on The Salvers, but that'll never happen.
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It's a little ultra-violent.
Hey, will they cast Simon Pegg? -
but as a movie I think it would fucking amazing! I mean right now there is a great underlying complex story line weaving within the shitty ass filler. That is why a lot of people dropped the book - can't deal with filler issues. I completely agree. Right now, the book is really just for people who want to look at naked comic boobs and see what kind of "stunt" the next issue produces. Either that or trying to figure out what Butcher is saying most of the time. Simon Pegg would make a fucking PERFECT hugie, but that is BECAUSE Simon is Hughie. Either Garth or Darick knows Simon. After it was dropped by DC and Dynamite picked it up, Simon wrote the foreword for the first 6 issues that DC had published.
But it really would make a good fucking movie. -
The big question is, who will be playing Love Sausage?
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And if it does happen it will not be done right so why don't we just kill it now.
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Never got to read it the proper way. Sounds interesting enough for me :)
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Pretty good, but not his best by far. Where the fuck is the oft-rumored Preacher? Also, I'd like to see an adaptation of his first War Stories installment, Johan's Tiger - it's short, but could easily be fleshed out.
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And I'm guessing they'll try to get Ray Winstone as Billy Butcher.
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And Dingbatty has it right. Ennis has terminal homophobia.
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is one of the greatest superhero movies ever made because it tricks the general audience into thinking its something else. Its weird because I visited my mother who had back surgery and on the living room TV was Unbreakable and on the couch and recliner were my aunt and my mom completely engrossed in the film. I work at a video store and I get old people asking for the movie all the time. It really is a remarkable film. I'm a big fan of The Sixth Sense, but Unbreakable is a different breed of film. It doesn't flaunt the fact that it is a superhero movie, it goes about it as a mystery, a family drama; it's about a man coming out of his long descent of unhappiness and attempting to recapture some of his pride and respect. It made the existence of a superhero plausible. I really wish it would have been more publicly accepted and been given a chance, because I heard a rumor that Shamalayan wanted to make a trilogy based on the character, and I think that would have been more than incredible. Anyway, is it me or do you think the disappointment of the public not being more receptive to the genius of that film has haunted him in his later films?
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THE BOYS is a cheap, nasty, callous, ugly book, all obnoxious shock value with no heart. That said, Ennis work on PUNISHER (MAX) is probably the greatest work he's ever done. It's downright brilliant. Powerful and harrowing, brutal while never gratuitous, it's his most mature work, and a triumph for Marvel Comics in general. One might say it's the comic equivalent of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (but perhaps even more powerful, just because it does more and goes further; read "The Slavers" alone, for example).
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Count me in for the love and support of UNBREAKABLE. What a wonderful, painfully underrated film. I think people don't like to be misled when they see a film (see the people who might otherwise have liked, say, SWEENEY TODD if they'd known it was a musical going in), which is really their loss. But it's still a real shame.
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after reading Preacher, you've kind of seen all he has to offer. his Punisher run was so derivative of Preacher it was laughable. but i haven't been paying attention to The Boys, so maybe this is something new. i hope so, otherwise why wouldn't they just make the Preacher movie already?
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On Blu-Ray DVD April 1st. Can't wait!
Oh, and 'The Boys' had it's shining moment under the sun during the first issue, when Hughie's girlfriend was ripped in half by the A-Train. The book could have gone a couple of different ways with that, but it is so damn distracting. I buy it because I enjoy it. But I could really love this idea, not just like it. Too many different story-arcs, the whole gay-batman-robin-threesome storyline sucked ass. -
Unbreakable was great.
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it's arule or something.
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You say Ennis' "Punisher run was so derivative of Preacher it was laughable." While that's very true of his lame Marvel Knights Punisher, the Marvel MAX Punisher is utterly brilliant, harrowing, and powerful. There's a difference, and if you haven't checked out MAX Punisher because you were (understandably) not a fan of Knights Punisher, you need to.
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It's not that great of a series. Goes over the top for the sake of going over the top. So far, there hasn't been much of a story other than big Europeans with questionable morals humiliate superheroes with equally questionable morals. I think Preacher was Ennis' Sandman. He won't do anything of that quality again but people will still buy his work based on that one series.
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I mean come one Quint....
No, seriously, come on.
Fuck's sake man, get a fucking grip. What the fuck has happened to your taste in movies? "Unbreakable?"
Come the fuck on...
Fucking hell. -
But Hughie isn't the main charactor, Butcher is.
I'd like to see Nathan Fillion as Butcher.
Though I'm curious as to how the absolutely WRONG things Ennis puts in this book can be put on screen without an NC-17.
I've been reading the Boys since the begining, the book has done things only Ennis could do, even having to change publishers due to some of the WRONG things depicted.
I hate theaters, but this movie will get me into one again. -
The Boys definitely lives in a certain basis of reality, but I wouldn't compare it to being like Unbreakable.
Its more like a world where we see how big assholes super heroes are.
As if Robin and Teen Titans were a bunch of Paris Hilton's and Lindsey Lohan's.
And yes, Unbreakable is a great movie. -
Ray Gamma's taking the piss if he can't appreciate UNBREAKABLE. Sam muthafucking Jackson chews the muthafucking scenery with his muthafucking portrayal of Mr. Glass and M. Night turns in his best storytelling to date. I liked THE SIXTH SENSE, but I've watched UNBREAKABLE about four more times than TSS since both arrived on DVD.
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...Is getting waaaay fucking old. With Hancock on the way, maybe it was a wise idea to take the geek element out of Wanted. This sounds really fucking lame. Don't get on my back either, because I eventually got around to reading Preacher, which was...marginally alright.
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I wanted to be an actor. Reading The Boys, I felt that little pang seeing the Butcher character--he looks just like me. But I'm American, also a full time student. So the answer is, whoever's casting needs to come to Toronto and randomly discover me. And bring a tape to teach me the accent.
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Give it one season. Maybe two. Of course, 100 Bullets should be an HBO series as well.
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...But, like Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison before him, isn't he just a teensy bit falling for his own hype and suffering an ego-explosion as a result?
PREACHER: Up there with WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT RETURNS as one of the all-time greatest graphic novels EVER. The sick stuff and the pitch-black humour was justified by what the story demanded. Plus, it's just so damn funny!
PUNISHER: Pretty much everything Ennis has done with the Punisher has been awesome. Can't wait to read THE SLAVERS - getting some awesome reviews.
KEV: Anything with ex-SAS loser Kev is comedy gold. The comic where he tells Midnighter to fuck off for being gay is hilarious - but mainly because it shows Kev to be the dickhead that he is. Did I mention, it's hilarious?
THE BOYS: Yes, very clever, Garth Ennis. You find super heroes stupid. You find the thought of enforced sexual assault against a minor superhero funny - necause not only was it implied, but there was a definite perverse pleasure in wringing as many double entendres and sloppy one-liners out of the sexual threat situations as possible. Like wise the homophobia - so deftly handled in the KEV comics, so hamfistedly handled in THE BOYS - and the reasoning behind the Boys and their mission. The major superheroes are sexual deviants who gangrape minor superheroes for fun. The leader of the Boys can only fuck people he absolutely hates. The only normal person in the whole thing is Wee Hughie, who is also the person we care least about. He's washy, badly written and obviously only there to provide the plot with a moral centre. He's barely two-dimensional. And as much as THE BOYS is funny, it's only funny if you admit to yourself that the bit of you laughing at it is the sick bastard part of yourself that luaghs as Madeleine McCann jokes on Sickipedia and finds all of The Accused jokes on CHUD side-splittingly funny.
Considering how well Garth Ennis usually handles sexual perversion and extreme violence - allowing you to laugh AT it whilst never empathising WITH it - he goes and does the entire opposite in THE BOYS, where you're meant to find ALL the grim sexual violence and depravity funny and the violence funny too. All I read was a bunch of fucked-up social outcasts who had access to superhero potion, who fight against gangbanging rapist bastard superheroes because they hate them. Neither side is right, neither side is particularly likeable, and it reads like an ugly ruck outside your favourite nightclub. You watch, you may laugh, but deep down you know this is fucked-up stuff, and realy isn't funny at all.
Garth Ennis. How the mighty have fallen. Now go back to PUNISHER and CONSTANTINE and we'll forget this BOYS mishap ever happened. -
It's actualy the CONSTANTINE stuff that read like it was derived from PREACHER. Except it may have been written earlier, which means that PREACHER could have been derivative of Ennis' CONSTANTINE. Whatever. It's all great stuff, but way too similar to be coincidental.
His PUNISHER, on the other hand, is fucking outstanding.
His GHOST RIDER... not so much. -
Fuck it, I'm tired. It's not easy to spell right when you're tired.
Fuckos. -
You did read the one where the girl cuffed Frank to the bed, beat her mob boss sister to death with a baseball bat in front of him, screwed him in the blood-splattered room, and then blew her brains out while still mounted on him, right? Great stuff!!
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Uhhh I hope you're talking about the Marvel Knights Punisher because Punisher Max is probably the book of the decade and one of the high points in comic book history.
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He needs to direct this. This seems like a movie about antiheroes, and nobody does those better than Cuaron.
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Gratuitous means that it doesn't serve the story, which the horrible, explicit violence in PUNISHER absolutely does. Explicit and gratuitous are two different things.
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I think you you nailed the essential problem with The Boys. It's impossible to care about any of the characters. Hughie is ostensibly the moral centre, but he is the blandest character by far.
Preacher, on the other hand, had a clear sense of right and wrong, however twisted the story was. I cared about Jesse and Tulip. Cassidy's story arc is incredible - you go from liking him to hating him to pitying him and then see him redeem himself. It's early days, granted, but I just don't see that sort of depth of characterisation in The Boys. There's too many random non-characters, even on the eponymous team. Being French isn't a compelling character trait.
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