After several attempts to translate Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke And Key to some screen, any screen, Universal has stepped up to take the latest stab at it, this time as a feature film. As fans of the series, or news stories about things that don’t pan out, will recall, Locke & Key has long been in some form of development, first as a feature film under Dimension, followed by a rejected Fox pilot that was shepherded by genre project hoarders Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, then finally Kurtzman and Orci’s proposed movie trilogy, because why not really go for broke with it? It’s this last incarnation that’s now ended up at Universal—though as of now, demonstrating that its backers have learned to lower their expectations, only a single movie is being discussed.
Still, even one Locke & Key movie would be a small miracle for the acclaimed story that’s had such unexpected difficulty getting off the comics page, despite its pedigree and slam-dunk mix of the two things modern producers and audiences love most: the supernatural and keys. Anyway, expect to hear more about this project, either in the form of a long-awaited green-light announcement, or another, future announcement referencing the fact that this one also didn’t happen.