‘Locke & Key’ TV Series In Development, Again
Joe HillandGabriel Rodriguez’sLocke & Keyis coming to the small screen. IDW Entertainment, which published theLocke & Keycomics, announced today that Hill will write and executive produce a newLocke and KeyTV series. There’s no word yet on which network might air the show, although it seems likely to end up at a cable channel.
Oh, and if all of this sounds oddly familiar, that’s because this is the second attempt to get aLocke and KeyTV series off the ground. The first one got as far asa pilot directed by Mark Romanek, but Fox opted not to move forward with it.
TheLocke & Keycomic book series, which ran from 2008 through 2013, follows the three Locke siblings, who return to their family estate in Massachusetts after the gruesome death of their father. Once there, they discover magical keys that grant special powers and open strange doors. Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones interested in these mysterious artifacts, as a supernatural force is also after them.
The books were critically and commercially successful, and the move to adapt them for the screen began very early on. Dimension Films acquired the rights around 2008 with the intent of making aLocke & Keymovie, but after making little progress they lost the rights in 2010 to DreamWorks. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzmansigned on to producethat iteration of the project, and eventually reworked it as a television series. 20th Century Foxgreenlit aLocke & Keypilot, but ultimatelydecided againstordering it to series.
TheLocke & Keypilotwas shown at Comic-Conin 2011, sparking hopes that another network might scoop it up — and for a moment there, it looked likeMTV might bite. But nothing came of that either, and in 2012 Universal began trying to adaptLocke & Keyas a feature film trilogy.As of 2014, Albert Torres was working on the script and Kurtzman and Orci were still set to executive produce. None of them appear to be involved with the latestLocke & KeyTV series attempt.
Said Hill in a statement:
I love this story. The seven years I spent working onLocke & Keywas the happiest creative experience of my life and there still isn’t a day when I don’t think about those characters and miss visiting with them. The six books of the series are very like six seasons of a cable TV series and so it feels only natural to bring that world to the little screen and to see if we can’t scare the pants off viewers everywhere.
IDW is developingLocke & Keyas a straight to series project before finding it a network home. Hill’s comments suggestLocke & Keywill likely end up on cable (or maybe a streaming service like Amazon or Netflix), as opposed to a broadcast network.Locke & Keyhas had a long, bumpy road to the screen, but fans should take heart — this latest development suggests IDW isn’t giving up yet. And hey, ifPreachercan finally make it to television after nearly two decades of false starts and on-again, off-again development, maybe there’s hope forLocke & Key.
