Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke joins as lead in one of our most anticipated comic book adaptations

Emilia Clarke is set to star as the lead in the Prime Video adaptation of Criminal, the noir series of graphic novels from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.

As per Variety, Clarke will appear as Mallory, who is described as “a slick and daring armed robber, as quick with a gun as she is with her wits…Mallory is a woman on the edge, living on the wrong side of the law and hiding secrets that will bring her and her entire crew into the danger zone.”

Clarke joins a cast that already includes the likes of Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy), Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under), and Adria Arjona (Hit Man). Gus Halper (Fear the Walking Dead) will play her lover Ricky Lawless, with the twosome forming the crux of a dangerous heist crew.

Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ seminal hard-boiled crime drama debuted in 2006 and ran for 10 issues, with new volumes running through the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Like its source material, Prime Video’s Criminal will be “an interlocking universe of crime stories”.

Captain Marvel director Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden are on board to helm the first four episodes of the series, which is currently undated.

Still, if you know anything about Brubaker and Phillips’ work, this is one to get excited about. The creative partnership specialize in the sort of gumshoe-and-gangsters stories that feel like relics from another time. Under the pair’s watchful eye, however, they feel fresh, modern, and just as cinematic as any current-day TV show – with The Fade Out being another graphic novel well worth seeking out ahead of Criminal’s release.

For more, check out the best comics of 2023 and the best shows on Prime Video.