Has The Boys Found it's Director?

Just a couple of weeks ago, we had a story about the ongoing development of a feature film based around Garth Ennis' ultra violent, satirical superhero comic The Boys. Writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi were vocal about their love of the comic and the desire to see it faithfully adapted.  I also speculated about who they could possibly get to direct such a project.

Well, we might have the answers. Recently, A Nightmare on Elm Street director Samuel Bayer indicated(courtesy of Slashfilm) that he did not want to return to do a sequel on that film. He hinted at the possibility of tackling a comic, but gave no clues. Until his interview with Shock, that is...

Rotten: Are you lining up projects now that you're in the home stretch with Nightmare?


Bayer: 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 "The Dark Knight." There are some great books I don't think people have tapped into yet.

Whether or not this ever takes hold is still up in the air. I'm not totally familiar with Bayer's work(he's done mostly concert films and music videos until now), but I'm loving the look of his Elm Street. The Boys is a gritty, violent, raunchy superhero film. Whoever does tackle it is going to have to deal with a ton of excess violence and gratuitous sex....which is why the comic is so popular. I loved it for a time, before the storyline sorta hit the skids. But if anyone ever asked me what comic book I want to see made into a movie, The Boys would be the first name on my list.