Joe Hill’s Locke & Key in development for television

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Last October, writer Joe Hill provided a status update on the development of a live action adaptation of his IDW comic book series Locke & Key, revealing that plans for a trilogy of feature films were being abandoned and that IDW might be aiming to turn the property into a television series. Seven months later, it's official: IDW Entertainment is teaming with Circle of Confusion, the production company behind The Walking Dead, to bring Locke & Key to the small screen.

Hill will write the pilot episode and executive produce the show, which will follow the plot of the comics: 

Locke & Key tells of three siblings who, after the gruesome murder of their father, move to their ancestral home in Maine. They soon discover the house has magical keys that give the bearers a vast array of powers and abilities. Little do they know (but they soon will) that a devious demon also wants the keys.

A Locke & Key TV show got close to happening before at Fox. A pilot was shot, directed by Mark Romanek and starring Miranda Otto, Jesse McCartney, Sarah Bolger, Skylar Gertner, and Nick Stahl. Attendees of the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con got to watch the pilot, but it never made it to air as Fox chose not to make the series.

When IDW and Circle of Confusion are ready to take this new iteration of Locke & Key out to cable and digital networks, here's hoping they'll find one that's more interested in the property than Fox was.