Amazon MGM Studios has ordered a series adaptation of Benjamin Stevenson’s bestselling novel Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone for Prime Video, with Penn Badgley set to star in the lead role.

The darkly comedic murder mystery marks a notable return to the genre for the actor best known for portraying the obsessive killer Joe Goldberg across five seasons of Netflix’s You.

The project comes from showrunner and executive producer David Hemingson, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Holdovers, and is produced by Fifth Season and Made Up Stories. Badgley will also executive produce alongside Hemingson, author Stevenson, Bruna Papandrea, Steve Hutensky and Jeanne Snow of Made Up Stories, and Molly Allen. The series order was announced on August 27, 2026.

According to the official logline, the story is set deep in the dense mountains of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. It follows Ern Cunningham (Badgley), a mystery-writing expert who reluctantly attends a family reunion to welcome his brother Michael home from prison,the same brother Ern helped convict.

When a frozen body appears and a snowstorm traps everyone inside, the deaths begin to mount. As the title bluntly states, everyone in Ern’s family has already killed someone, either by accident or otherwise.

Hemingson expressed strong enthusiasm for the material and the casting in a statement. “I’m thrilled to be partnered with Fifth Season and Made Up Stories in bringing Ben’s heartfelt and darkly hilarious whodunit to life,” he said. “And we are so lucky to have Penn as our lead. I can’t think of any actor better suited to bring Ern’s intensity, brilliance and hilariously dry sense of humor to life.”

Stevenson, whose 2022 novel launched the internationally bestselling Ernest Cunningham Mysteries series, also shared his excitement. “I am blown away by the vision and enthusiasm everyone has for bringing this book, and Ernest Cunningham, to the screen,” he said. “Penn perfectly captures Ern’s clueyness and cleverness, and David has brought bags of wit and heart to the script. With the passion of Amazon MGM Studios, Bruna and Steve behind us we have an absolutely killer team, and I can’t wait to solve a murder with them!”

Papandrea and Hutensky of Made Up Stories added: “We’re beyond excited to bring Ben’s sensational book to life in Dave Hemingson’s brilliant hands. We have found the perfect ‘Ern’ in Penn and it’s a dream to be making this series with our amazing partners Amazon MGM Studios and Fifth Season.”

The novel, published by Mariner Books in the United States in 2022 after an earlier Australian release, is the first in a series that has grown to four books, with a fifth installment currently in the works. Subsequent titles include Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect, Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret, and Everyone in This Bank Is a Thief.

Stevenson’s work is known for its self-aware, metafictional approach to the classic whodunit, often breaking the fourth wall and playfully acknowledging genre conventions while delivering intricate plots laced with dark humor.

A limited series adaptation had previously been in development at HBO in 2022 with Made Up Stories and what was then Endeavor Content (now Fifth Season), but that project did not move forward.

The new version relocates the story from its original Australian ski resort setting to rural Vermont, while retaining the core premise of a dysfunctional family gathering under snowy isolation with a rising body count.

Badgley’s casting has drawn particular attention given his recent television history. After concluding You in 2025, the actor has continued working with Amazon on the forthcoming romantic comedy You Deserve Each Other, opposite Meghann Fahy.

Everyone In my Family Has Killed Someone

Here he steps into a different role within the crime genre: rather than the perpetrator, Ern is a theoretical expert on mystery fiction who has never solved a real crime, forced to apply his knowledge when his own family becomes the suspect pool.

The tone is expected to lean into dark comedy and clever plotting rather than pure grimness.

Public Reaction

Early reactions on social media have already noted the fitting nature of the casting, with observers pointing out that Badgley’s established skill at playing intense, observant characters who believe themselves the most rational person in the room aligns closely with the book’s protagonist.

No release date or additional casting has been announced. Given the recent series order, production timelines suggest a potential premiere no earlier than 2027. The project joins a growing slate of literary adaptations at streamers seeking smart, character-driven mysteries with built-in commercial appeal from established book series.

For readers familiar with Stevenson’s novels, the adaptation offers the chance to see the author’s distinctive voice, witty, self-referential, and tightly plotted translated to the screen under the guidance of a writer known for emotional depth and humor. For television audiences, it presents Badgley in a role that both plays to his strengths and inverts the killer persona that defined a major chapter of his career.

As development continues, the series stands as one of the more intriguing new genre entries of the year, promising a blend of family dysfunction, locked-room suspense, and dry comedy against a snowbound backdrop.