Amazon has released a full length trailer for their new series, The Boys. The Boys is show about humans in a world full of superheroes who abuse their powers without care for the human casualties. Fed-up, an angry and violent Englishman, Billy Butcher, puts together a rag-tag team of ex-military personnel with black ops experience to put the superheroes in check. Butcher’s team call themselves The Boys, hence the show’s title. The Boys are fighting to dismantle The Seven, the most powerful and corrupt group of superheroes in a David versus Goliath like match-up.
The Boys is based off a dark and violent comic book series by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson that ran from 2006-2012, primarily under Dynamite Entertainment. The television show has Eric Kripke, creator of Supernatural, as its showrunner and executive producer. The Boys is product from Sony Pictures TV Studios, Amazon, and Original Films. Amazon ordered a total of eight episodes.
Billy Butcher is played by Karl Urban. Urban is well known for his roles in The Lord of the Rings franchise, as Eomer, and the Star Trek film series playing Dr. Leonard McCoy. Urban has worked in television before. He starred in Fox’s short-lived Sci-Fi series, Almost Human. Another key character in The Boys is Susan Rayner who will be played by Jennifer Esposito (Crash, NCIS). Rayer is an ambitious CIA agent who has a dark past in the Army with Billy Butcher over atrocities in Afghanistan. She has a bizarre love/hate relationship with Billy. Esposito will appear in five of the eight episodes.
Urban and Esposito will be joined by fellow cast members Jack Quaid (Rampage, The Hunger Games) as Hughie, Erin Moriarty (Jessica Jones) as Starlight, Antony Starr (American Gothic) as Homelander, Dominique McElligott (The Last Tycoon) as Queen Maeve, Chace Crawford (Gossip Girl) as The Deep, Jessie T. Usher (Survivor’s Remorse) as A-Train, and Nathan Mitchell (iZombie) as Black Noir.
At New York City Comic Con, it was revealed that Simon Pegg (Star Trek films, Shaun of the Dead) would also appear in the series. Pegg was the original inspiration for the comic version of Hughie for the character artist, Darick Robertson. In the show, Pegg will play the father of Hughie (Jack Quaid). At the Comic Con Panel, Pegg said, “Around the time Shaun of the Dead came out, I heard from Darick and I found out that my face was being used in this comic book, and I was extremely flattered and thrilled… it’s such an amazing story, and it really lends itself to an adaptation. And so I’m so happy that when this happened and then I got a call about maybe being in the show and we discussed how, it just seemed so perfect to be Jack’s father.”
The Boys will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, July 22nd.