Variety reports Sex Criminals is heading to Amazon’s Prime Video service, with Kumail Nanjiani, Emily V. Gordon, and Tze Chun attached as series creators. The trio will serve as executive producers with Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky, the creators of the comic, and Margot Robbie‘s production company LuckyChap Entertainment. Nanjiani is also expected to act on the show, which has received an eight-episode order from the streaming service.
Sex Criminals, which ran at Image for 31 issues (and a special) from 2013 to 2020, was a comedy following Suze and Jon, a couple who discover they have the ability to literally stop time when they have sex. So they do what any other couple would: they use their power to rob banks. It’s unclear if Nanjiani would play Jon or not at the time of writing.
He and Gordon stated, “Sex Criminals is the exact kind of thing Winter Coat [their production company] aims to bring to life: love stories in weird places. 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.”
Chun comments he’s been a fan of the comic “since the first issue hit the stands. This has been my dream project for over a decade, and co-creating this show with Emily and Kumail has been one of the creative highlights of my career. We are so excited to bring this series to life with our incredible partners at Lucky Chap and Prime Video.”
Zdarsky and Fraction simply added, “We’re overjoyed to have such talented people bring our dumb comic to life.”
Fraction had previously tried to adapt the comic with his partner Kelly Sue DeConnick at Universal TV in 2015, but the show never materialized. The writer, who currently scripts Batman for DC, eventually made his debut as a TV co-creator with Apple’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
Nanjiani and Gordon, who’ve been married since 2007, formed Winter Coat Films in 2024. They are still best known collectively for writing the autobiographical 2017 rom com The Big Sick (that Nanjiani also starred in), which won Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
They previously worked with Chun on Little America, the immigrant-themed anthology series they developed with Lee Eisenberg for Apple. Chun previously worked at Prime as an executive producer and co-showrunner on Boots Riley’s series I’m a Virgo.
