First reported by That Hashtag Show, and now confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix is nearing a deal to give Locke & Key the thing it’s been trying to get for a decade: A series order. After producing a new pilot at Hulu, that streaming giant decided to pass on the series, so Netflix has snatched it up and will retain showrunner Carlton Cuse and creator Joe Hill. This marks the first time the property, which also had a failed pilot at Fox in 2010 and a failed movie development at Universal, has been given a series order, and also provides Netflix with more comic book content after their myriad Marvel shows, forthcoming Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and their adaptation of The Umbrella Academy.
The Hulu pilot directed by Andy Muschietti (IT) will be scrapped and recast, with Muschietti unable to return for the Netflix version due to his IT: Chapter 2 commitments, though he and sister Barbara Muschietti will be credited as executive producers. Muschietti’s pilot starred Frances O’Connor, Nate Corddry, Jack Mulhern, Megan Carpentier and Jackson Robert Scott. O’Connor portrayed family matriarch Nina Locke, who moves her three children to Maine after her husband is brutally murdered. Insiders say Hulu’s new chief content officer Joel Stillerman (The Walking Dead) and senior vp Craig Erwich wanted to pick up Locke & Key for series, but the streamer’s new CEO Randy Freer gave the project a pass.
Locke & Key tells the story of the Locke family and their journey into Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them, and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all!
Carlton Cuse (The Strain, LOST) and comic creator Joe Hill are set to executive produce and write the pilot script for the Netflix show, based on the IDW Entertainment comic series written by Joe Hill with art by Gabriel Rodriguez. Andy and Barbara Muschietti (IT, Mama) will executive produce alongside Lindsey Springer for Cuse’s production company Genre Arts. Ted Adams and David Ozer from IDW Entertainment will also serve as executive producers.
Locke & Key has had a long history of making it to another medium with Dimension Films purchasing the rights in 2008. Following that, a television series was in development at FOX in 2010 (which was even given a series order, but never went forward after the pilot was produced), and finally a failed film adaptation with producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci in 2014 with Universal Pictures.
