The Locke & Key TV series project has had a rough time, but its troubles finally appear to be over, thanks to Netflix.
Back in July 2016, THR revealed that Hulu had given the show adaptation of writer Joe Hill’s IDW horror comic book series a pilot order, with Carlton Cuse (Lost) set to serve as showrunner. Auspiciously, Andy Muschietti (It, Mama) was on tap to direct the pilot after Doctor Strange‘s Scott Derrickson had to withdraw.
Unfortunately, after all that, Hulu passed on the project! However, Netflix eventually came in for the rescue… even if said rescue involved scrapping Hulu’s pilot. Regardless, the Locke & Key TV series is finally happening, officially greenlit as a 10-episode series for Netflix!
In the latest news on Netflix’s Locke & Key, the reality of this long-beleaguered adaptation is finally becoming palpable, with the official reveal of a premiere date for the series, accompanied by the very first posters!
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Locke & Key Release Date
Locke & Key is set to premiere on Netflix on Friday, February 7, 2020.
Locke & Key Poster
The premiere date reveal also came with the first bit of official ephemera in the form of a poster, which Netflix has also released in motion form, as seen below.
Locke & Key TV Series Cast
Darby Stanchfield (Scandal, NCIS, Castle) will star in Netflix’s Locke & Key, reported Deadline. She will play Nina Locke, the widowed single mother of the three Locke children, who moves the family into their ancestral home, the Keyhouse, in Maine. However, the property has centuries of connections to the supernatural – and the circumstances of her husband’s death – and acts as a dimensional portal through which malevolent demons wish to cross. Nina was played by Frances O’Connor in Hulu’s pilot, and by Miranda Otto in the nixed 2011 version.
She is joined by a young cast who will portray her onscreen children, the Locke siblings, on the streaming giant’s reworked version of the Locke & Key TV series.
Connor Jessup (American Crime, Falling Skies) will play Tyler Locke, who, as a teenager, is the oldest of the siblings.
Emilia Jones (Wolf Hall, Utopia) will play Kinsey Locke.
Jackson Robert Scott (It – as Georgie Denbrough) will play the youngest of the trio, Bode Locke. Interestingly, Scott was cast as Bode in the nixed Hulu iteration and, for now, stands as the only cast member retained by Netflix.
Also onboard are the following:
Sherri Saum (The Fosters), Felix Mallard (Neighbours) Petrice Jones (iBoy), Griffin Gluck (American Vandal), Bill Heck (The Alienist), Coby Bird (The Good Doctor), Thomas Mitchell Barnet (In the Dark) and Laysla De Oliveira (The Gifted).
Locke & Key TV Series Details
While the streaming giant rescued the wayward project, the move involved crucial caveats: Netflix’s series order came with the confirmation that Locke & Key will go back to the drawing board, re-casting while redeveloping the scripts, essentially scrapping the Hulu pilot, which was directed by It helmer Andy Muschietti (who’s too busy with the sequel to handle the mulligan).
Interestingly, Netflix is opting to keep the Hulu iteration’s creative fulcrum, Joe Hill, who remains onboard as creator/writer/executive producer. The same goes for showrunner Carlton Cuse, known from Lost, The Strain, Bates Motel and Amazon’s upcoming Jack Ryan series. Cuse is now joined in that capacity by Meredith Averill, who’s worked on Jane the Virgin, Star-Crossed and The Good Wife, along with Netflix’s upcoming TV series horror reboot The Haunting of Hill House.
In 2016, IDW Entertainment released news that Locke & Key writer Joe Hill (he wrote the story for the comics, with art by Gabriel Rodriguez) was on board to write the pilot and executive produce the TV show adaptation as a straight-to-series project. It’s unclear how Hulu and Cuse’s involvement might change that plan, but Hill had previously said in a statement:
I love this story. The seven years I spent working on Locke & Key was 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.
Locke & Key begins with the story of three siblings returning to their family’s ancestral home following the brutal and mysterious murder of their father. As they explore the house and its surroundings, it becomes clear that there are wonderful and terrible things lurking on the grounds. It is a comic book horror classic.
Hulu’s scrapped Locke & Key pilot consisted of the following cast:
Frances O’Connor (The Conjuring 2, A.I. Artificial Intelligence) as Nina Locke. Sam Robards (Twisted, Gossip Girl) as Rendell Locke. Jack Mulhern (Walking to the Waterline) as Tyler Locke. Megan Charpentier (It, Mama) as Kinsey Locke. Jackson Robert Scott (It, Fear the Walking Dead) as Bode Locke. Nate Corddry (The Circle, The Marvelous Ms. Maisel) as Duncan Locke. Owen Teague (It, Bloodline) as Sam Lesser. Lastly, Danny Glover was to play a cameo role as teacher Joe Ridgeway.
Interestingly, long before Hulu’s version, a 2011 TV adaptation made it far enough to produce a pilot, but never garnered a pick-up. This version had Josh Friedman as a showrunner (The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Avatar 2) and a cast that included Miranda Otto, Sarah Bolger, and Ksenia Solo. Check out the trailer…
Sadly, this version of Locke & Key never made it past a pilot, but the pop culture world seems better poised to embrace an onscreen version of this horror comic now. Not only are there way more comic book adaptations on TV and film, but Joe Hill has attained a better industry foothold, especially with the recent film adaptaion of Horns. Hopefully, the Netflix adaptation is good and garners enough of an audience to ensure its continuation. Universe, you owe us this.
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Joseph Baxter is a contributor for Den of Geek and Syfy Wire. You can find his work here. Follow him on Twitter @josbaxter.