A24 UK has optioned the television rights to Alexis Hall’s “Boyfriend Material,” Deadline confirmed on April 29.
The move signals something more than a single adaptation deal — it’s the latest proof that queer romance literature has built a commercial infrastructure that prestige production companies can no longer afford to ignore.
Hall’s 2020 novel follows Luc O’Donnelly, the chaotic son of two faded 1980s rock stars, and his enemies-to-lovers entanglement with buttoned-up barrister Oliver Blackwood. The book became a BookTok phenomenon after publication, generating the kind of sustained, organic fandom that algorithms reward and studios chase. Two sequels followed: “Husband Material” in 2022, with the trilogy-closing “Father Material” due this June. which means A24 isn’t just buying a book, it’s buying a franchise.
That’s the real story here.
The option gives A24 UK a gay love story with an established readership, a completed universe, and built-in sequel momentum before a single casting decision has been made. The infrastructure already exists. The audience already exists. The question is whether A24 has the appetite to let this be as queer, as messy, and as funny as it needs to be, or whether the prestige house aesthetic sands down everything that made the book land.
The comparison to “Red, White & Royal Blue” is inevitable and instructive. Amazon Studios optioned that novel the year it was published, in 2019, and didn’t release the film until 2023. The wait was long; the result was a genuine cultural moment for gay romance onscreen. “Heated Rivalry” followed a similar runway — Jacob Tierney approached author Rachel Reid in 2023, and the show didn’t reach screens until late 2025. The pattern is clear: development timelines for queer adaptations are not short. Anyone expecting a “Boyfriend Material” series in the next eighteen months should recalibrate.
But the trajectory matters more than the timeline. What we’re watching is a pipeline formalize in real time. BookTok surfaces queer romance. Fandoms organize around it. Studios option it. This is no longer an accident, it’s a repeatable model, and A24 UK attaching itself to “Boyfriend Material” is the most credible institutional endorsement that model has received.
A24’s involvement raises the stakes aesthetically, too. This is not a streamer chasing demographics with a mid-budget crowdpleaser. A24 UK — which produced “Saltburn,” “Rye Lane,” and “All of Us Strangers” —has a track record with queer material that leans into specificity rather than softening it. “All of Us Strangers” was devastating precisely because it refused to sand down its queerness into palatability. If that DNA carries into “Boyfriend Material,” this could be something genuinely distinct from the romantic comedy lane that most gay adaptations have been steered into.
The novel’s London setting and its class-inflected central tension, the scrappy, fame-adjacent Luc versus the establishment-coded Oliver, give it more texture than its rom-com packaging suggests. Hall writes gay men who are fully realized rather than aspirationally sanitized, and the humor is sharp enough to cut. That’s either a gift for the right creative team or a liability for the wrong one.
No writer, director, or cast has been attached yet.
Fan casting is already circulating, Louis Partridge and Richard Madden are getting early traction for Luc and Oliver respectively, but that’s the internet doing what the internet does. The meaningful creative decisions haven’t been made publicly.
What has been made is a bet. A24 UK looked at the queer romance landscape, at the audience Hall has built, at the completed trilogy sitting ready for exploitation, and decided this was worth pursuing. That’s not charity, that’s a business read.
Gay love stories are no longer a risk calculation; they’re an asset class. The studios that understood that earliest are now the ones holding the options.
