Locke & Key - Coming Soon To A Theater Near You

Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez' acclaimed supernatural comic book series Locke & Key has been optioned by Universal to be developed as a feature film. The film will be produced by Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci - writers on the Star Trek and Transformers movies - through their Universal-based K/O Paper Products outfit. It will be co-produced with Ted Adams, the CEO and publisher of IDW Publishing. IDW Publishing is the company that publishes the Locke & Key comic series. For Univeral, the project will be overseen by Executive VP Jon Mone and Creative Executive Jay Polidoro.

This is not Hollywood's first bid at making a Locke & Key feature film. Initially, Dimension had the screen rights but they lapsed in 2010. That's when the superstar writers of Star Trek, Transformers and Fringe jumped in. K/O Paper Products and DeamWorks TV produced a pilot for Fox TV in an attempt to make the property a TV series but Fox turned it down. Although K/O Paper Products tried to shop the series around, no one picked it up - apparently due to budgetary constraints.

Locke & Key tells the story of three siblings who move to their ancestral home in Massachusetts after the gruesome murder of their father. The siblings discover that the house has magical keys that give their possessor a wide and varying array of powers and abilities, depending on the key. However, the family is forced to make a stand against evil when they realize that a deviously evil creature is also after the keys. As their popularity grew, Locke & Key expanded to tell a coming of age tale encompassing two generations and filled with heroism, tragedy, thrills and chills.

The Locke & Key graphic novel collections have been featured multiple times in the New York Times bestseller list, including the #1 spot on the list. The Locke & Key comics have garnered Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez multiple Eisner Awards nominations. The series has twice won the British Fantasy Award for best comic/graphic novel.

Joe Hill's claim to fame is not limited to the Locke & Key series. Hill is also the son of bestselling author Stephen King and the author of horror novels such as Heart-Shaped Box and NOS4A2. The latter won Hill an Eisner Award for best writer.