When Bill Skarsgård’s name is mentioned, a lot of people might think of him as Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the IT movies, and rightly so. That said, Skarsgård has more in his acting repertoire than just bringing demonic clowns to life. For instance, he’s building a solid lineup of action-related work, which includes the upcoming movie Boy Kills World. Our first look at that feature has arrived, and it shows off a shirtless Skarsgård’s ripped physique.
It’s been about three months since Boy Kills World started filming in Cape Town, South Africa, and while we don’t know yet when it will be released to the public, EW has shared this image of Bill Skarsgård’s character, who’s simply known as Boy, ready to fight.
If this is the first you’re hearing of Boy Kills World, the movie is described as a “dystopian fever dream action thriller,” and Bill Skarsgård’s Boy is a deaf mute with a big imagination. After his family is murdered, Boy trains with a mysterious shaman to smother his childish fantasies and become an instrument of death. Along with needing to pack on muscle for this role (like his brother Alexander did for The Northman), Bill Skarsgård said the following about his training in Boy Kills World:
This was an incredible journey into something completely new for me. I had two months to learn how to pretend how to fight well. [Action coordinator] Dawe Szatarski is a wizard, and he might’ve just pulled it off. The abs I credit to another wizard, my main man Valdemar Fredriksson. I just showed up, slightly late.
Dawe Szatarski trained under the late Brad Allan, a member of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team, so Bill Skarsgård was in good hands when he learned martial arts over the course of two months. With Skarsgård standing at 6 feet, four inches, he and Szatarski came up with “a unique movement style” that took advantage of his height and size to, as a representative behind Boy Kills World put it, “help make him an unconventional new-age action star.” Going off the lone image above, I definitely wouldn’t want to get on Boy’s bad side.
Bill Skarsgård is joined in Boy Kills World by Jessica Rothe, Michelle Dockery, Brett Gelman, Isaiah Mustafa, Yayan Ruhian, Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti (both playing a younger Boy), Quinn Copeland, Andrew Koji, Sharlto Copley and Famke Janssen. Behind the camera, Moritz Mohr directed off a script written by Arend Remmers and Tyler Burton Smith. As noted earlier, Boy Kills World is one of several ways Skarsgård is leaving his mark in the action genre, because along with appearing in Naked Singularity, he’s also part of John Wick: Chapter 4’s cast and has been selected to play Eric Draven in The Crow reboot.
Whether Boy Kills World is squeezed in for release this year or saved for 2023, CinemaBlend will pass along more major updates about it when they come in. If you’re looking for a recent Bill Skarsgård project to watch, he played Kro in Eternals, which is available to stream for Disney+ subscribers.