Dredd’s Karl Urban is the latest name to be added to the cast of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Amazon series The Boys, and he’s nabbed the lead role.
The series, which is adapted from Garth Ennis’s comic, was developed and will be directed by Rogen and Goldberg, who previously saved Ennis adap Preacher from years of development hell. It was written by Supernatural creator Eric Kripke.
Urban will play the sly and vicious Billy Butcher, who helps put together the titular squad of thugs and blue-collar criminals whose job it is to keep superheroes in line and eliminate them when necessary.
Mixing riotous comedy with bleak cynicism and all-out obscenity, Ennis and Darick Robertson’s satirical, ultraviolent comic is set in a time when superheroes have become a reckless liability, abusing the freedom afforded by their celebrity. It ran for 72 issues from 2008-2012, published initially by Wildstorm and then by Dynamite Entertainment.
Urban joins a cast that also includes The Hunger Games’ Jack Quaid, Jessie T. Usher, Karen Fukuhara, Erin Moriarty, Chace Crawford and Nathan Mitchell co-star.
The Boys hails from Sony Pictures TV Studios, which will co-produce with Amazon and Neal H. Moritz’s studio-based Original Films.
Words: Kevan Farrow (@KevanX)
