Amazon’s Serial Killer Romance Finds Its Lead Lovers

Emma Laird and Thomas Doherty will star in Prime Video’s adaptation of Butcher & Blackbird

The people want what they want — and apparently right now, that looks like two hot serial killers getting their freak on. Amazon MGM Studios is moving forward with its dark rom-com based on the viral serial killer romance novel Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver. 

Deadline reported Thursday that Thomas Doherty (Paradise, Tell Me Lies) and Emma Laird (28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Mayor of Kingstown) will star in its leading roles. The script was written by Laura Kosann — the writer currently adapting Ali Hazelwood’s steamy BDSM swimmer romance Deep End. The film will be directed by Chris McKay (The Lego Movie, Renfield) and released globally on Prime Video — a choice that feels linked to the difficult nature of making the film true to the book’s explicit sexual material and descriptions of murder, torture, gore, and cannibalism. 

Butcher & Blackbird is the first book in Weaver’s comedic romance series, the Ruinous Love Trilogy. It follows two serial killers, Sloane and Rowan, who begin a flirtatious relationship by scheduling an annual murder competition targeting their fellow serial killers. But as the game continues, the two are forced to reckon with their changing relationship — and hopefully keep each other from becoming another serial killer’s prize.

Trending Stories

Weaver self-published the book in 2023 and quickly became a sensation on TikTok. It was traditionally published by an imprint of Penguin Random House and by the end of the year was a New York Times bestseller. Now, Weaver has sold over 5 million copies worldwide and written two followups in the series, Leather & Lark and Scythe & Sparrow. The book’s success — and upcoming film adaptation — represent a meteoric rise in the popularity of “dark romance” books.

“Dark romance is an exploration of trauma, darker themes, adult content, morally gray behaviors,” Weaver told Rolling Stone in 2025.  “Those kinds of darker elements to life, but with the romantic setting, so there’s always a happy ending at the end. It’s dealing in those darker concepts of past trauma, the concerns about feeling like you’re unlovable or alone in the world. And I think that’s why it’s becoming more popular. It’s almost like therapy.”