Back in March of last year, director Adam McKay (The Other Guys) spoke about the difficulty of making a Hard R-rated anti-superhero movie. Turns out that McKay is prophetic. Columbia Pictures has put the adaptation of the Garth Ennis/Darick Robertson comic The Boys into turnaround. The Boys, an informal moniker for a CIA squad tasked with keeping tabs on (and occasionally putting down) superheroes, was apparently not to the studio’s liking. The reports don’t cite any specific reason for the drop, but McKay himself did mention the pic would be a hard sell and compared it to a “current day Watchmen.” Probably not what you want to tell a movie studio. In other news, Columbia Pictures' sister slate Screen Gems has also backed out of the adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s YA fantasy series, Mortal Instruments. Hit the jump for more.Heat Vision reported on the dropped projects by both studios. In the case of The Boys, producers Neal H. Moritz and Jason Netter are planning to shop the project around, so there may yet be life for it. The Mortal Instruments may also have a shot as Constantin Film still controls the rights and is trying to make the finances work to develop the project on its own. Previously attached to the story about a human woman fighting alongside human-angel hybrids were director Scott Stewart and principals Lily Collins and Jamie Campbell Bower. Stewart has left the project, but is sticking with angels, to focus on a television version of his Screen Gems film, Legion.