Well, Locke And Key just can’t catch a break. The latest effort to bring Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s comic to life has hit a major snag, as Hulu has declined to pick up the recent pilot for series.
THR reports that Hulu CEO Randy Freer vetoed the adaptation despite the enthusiasm of the streaming service’s executives. The pilot was written by Hill and directed by IT‘s Andy Muschietti, and comes from veteran showrunner Carlton Cuse (Bates Motel, Lost). Cuse’s agency WME and comic publishers IDW are currently looking for a new home for the show.
This confirms a quote from star Samantha Mathis from SXSW, who told Cultured Vultures that “I did a pilot for Hulu called Locke And Key but it didn’t get picked up by Hulu. It’s getting shopped around to Amazon and Netflix and Apple and everyone right now. Who knows, maybe that will end up some place.”
Mathis stars alongside Frances O’Connor, Nate Corddry, Megan Charpentier, Jack Mulhern, Jackson Robert Scott, Owen Teague and Danny Glover in the show which “revolves around three siblings (Mulhern, Carpentier, Scott) who, after the gruesome murder of their father, move to their ancestral home in Maine only to find the house has magical keys that give them an array of powers. Little do they know, a devious demon also wants the keys and will stop at nothing to attain them.
Locke And Key has had a tortured journey towards any kind of live-action adaptation. The first pilot was made in 2011 to tremendous acclaim but was not picked up by Fox, and Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci worked on a film adaptation that went nowhere. This latest iteration seemed to have all the pieces in place, and it’s baffling that such a brilliant comic with such clear cinematic potential has continued to struggle like this. Fingers crossed someone gives it a home…
Keep up with the latest genre news with the new issue of SciFiNow.
