Boy Kills World director Mortiz Mohr explains how its H. Jon Benjamin voiceover came to be
The "effed up fairy tale" starring Bill Skarsgård as a deaf and mute action hero premieres in theaters April 26
Boy Kills World, starring Bill Skarsgård and his rubber face (at perhaps the most rubber it’s ever been), is a bonkers, bloody, and endlessly imaginative tale of retribution and revenge. Skargård is “Boy,” a deaf and mute fighting machine hell-bent on murdering the woman who killed his family. Boy Kills World features some delightfully gratuitous, video game-inspired violence, a televised execution by cereal mascot, and one of the wildest murder weapons this writer has personally ever seen. But all of that somehow pales in comparison to the true comedic heart of the film, which lies in a pitch-perfect voice-over by Archer and Bob’s Burgers legend H. Jon Benjamin.
As the film explains, Skarsgård’s character, who doesn’t have a single line of dialogue of his own, chose Benjamin’s dulcet tones as his inner voice because it’s the last one he remembered from a video game. But Benjamin wasn’t actually the voice initial audiences heard. Skarsgård did his own voice-over when the film screened at festivals last year, which marks a pretty major shake-up for the theatrical release.
At the film’s U.S. premiere last night, director Moritz Mohr explained to The A.V. Club why he made the switch so late in the game. “I’m a massive fan of [Benjamin’s] and he was actually on top of my list for years,” he said. “When we got him it was just a dream come true.”