I love any media that will surely put you on a watchlist just for looking it up. Thanks very much, All You Need Is Kill and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. But it’s been a while since a title this salacious comes around and it ends up as something I’m gonna likely have to write about a lot. This is The Suicide Squad all over again. We saw on Deadline that Kumail Nanjiani along with his wife Emily V. Gordon and veteran TV writer Tze Chun will adapt Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarksy‘s Image Comic title Sex Criminals for Prime. Yep. A show called Sex Criminals. Great.
The premise of the comic is as indie comic as it gets. “Suze, a normal girl has an extraordinary ability: when she has sex, she stops time. One night, she meets Jon, who has the same gift. And so they do what any other sex having, time stopping couple would do: they rob banks.”
What are the odds that two people with that very specific super power would hook up? I’m sort of shocked this premise lasted more than one issue but Fraction and Zdarsky did it (yes, I said it) from 2013 to 2020 for 31 issues and one special. Nanjiani, Gordon, and Chun will write and produce the eight-episode season for Prime, which gave it a full series order. Nanjiani will also act in the series, presumably as Jon though that isn’t confirmed.
The project comes from Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap production company and Nanjiani and Gordon’s own Winter Coat Films.
“Sex Criminals is the exact kind of thing Winter Coat aims to bring to life: love stories in weird places,” said Gordon and Nanjiani. “From the moment LuckyChap brought us Matt and Chip’s comic book, we knew we wanted to bring these characters to screen and are so excited to do that alongside Tze Chun and Prime Video.”
“We’re overjoyed to have such talented people bring our dumb comic to life,” added Fraction and Zdarsky.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.
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