Why The Boys didn’t go forward at Cinemax

At some point, I’m sure the superhero movie and TV craze will die down…but that time is not now. There’s more superhero stuff out there than ever, and new players keep finding space for themselves. Take The Boys over on Amazon. In contrast to the squeaky clean Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Boys depicts a world where superheroes are amoral monsters, and it’s caught on in a big way. Even Tom Holland, Spider-Man himself, is into it.

And the show, which is based on a comic book by Garth Ennis, almost didn’t happen. Originally, the series was being developed by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Eric Kripke for Cinemax, but they hit a snag. “They said it was way beyond their budget,” Kripke told Business Insider. “To their credit, they let it go. They didn’t develop a watered-down version. They just couldn’t afford it.”

By “to their credit,” Kripke means that Cinemax could have chosen to slash the budget and force the creative team to make an inferior version of the show. Or they could have just found a new creative team. But Cinemax classed up the joint and allowed Rogen, Goldberg and Kripke to shop the show around elsewhere, which is when Amazon came calling.

“Up to that point, I think their taste had skewed fairly indie, and they wanted something edgy that still appealed to a broader audience,” Kripke said of Amazon. “We were a perfect fit and checked all the boxes. And we were happy because they have that sweet, sweet [Jeff] Bezos money. Then we just kept developing more scripts and they picked us up for the season.”

It is nice to have that Jeff Bezos money. That said, The Boys didn’t get an unlimited budget right out of the gate; they’re saving that for The Lord of the Rings. “We didn’t have anything close to a Game of Thrones budget or anything like that,” Kripke said. “We’re not even half of what that number would be. But when you don’t have all the money in the world, you get there through blood and tears.”

With the success the series has been finding, I’d expect the budget to keep going up. We’ll see how much when The Boys season 3 premieres on Amazon Prime Video sometime this year.

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h/t SlashFilm