Hot Ones, the popular First We Feast web series, kicked off its 17th season with Seth Rogen quite literally in the hot seat for the third time. Of the many projects Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg are currently juggling — including the upcoming Hulu series Pam & Tommy — the 39-year-old was asked about their Prime Video comic book series The Boys and its upcoming animated spin-off The Boys: Diabolical.
When asked by host Sean Evans what sort of things he and Goldberg look for in comic book source material to adapt into a series or film, Rogen explained why the decision was a no-brainer.
“Something like The Boys was obvious to us,” Rogen answered. “It’s a funny journey with the comic, because me and Evan, we’re big fans of Garth Ennis — he wrote the comic, and he wrote Preacher as well. We bought the first issue when it came out, and I remember we were like, ‘Oh my god, this would be such a great movie, like kinda regular people fighting superheroes,’ you know?”
“And we brought it to Sony, and Neal Moritz, the producer, and they were like, ‘Yeah, this would make an incredible movie, we’ll buy the rights to it,'” Rogen continued, but said that while Sony did indeed buy the rights, they “did not hire us to write it or produce it in any way shape, or form.”
However, after nearly a decade of the film being held up in various stages of development hell, it finally got bounced back to Rogen and Goldberg, who decided to turn it into a TV show. And while the series has certainly been popular — with the third season coming out later this year — Rogen explained why what they’re doing is different than Marvel.
“I think people love superhero stuff, and Marvel is obviously very popular and makes great films and TV shows,” he added. “But there are certain things they can’t do. It would simply be too damaging to their brand to have like, a character kill someone with a 10-foot dick.”
But even considering that very real scene from the series, season three promises to be the most “messed up” season yet.
“I think this season is our best yet. I’m very biased, obviously, but it’s a season that’s even more messed up than the ones we’ve done so far,” said star Jack Quaid in a recent interview. “There’s a lot of those signature messed up Boys moments.” Likewise, showrunner Eric Kripke says that the season will feature “the craziest thing they have ever pulled off” and that they’ll deliver “something nobody has ever seen before, probably for good reason.”
One could argue that there’s a good reason audiences had never seen someone choked with a 10-foot dick, so we can only imagine what Kripke and company have in store for us.