Universal options Joe Hill’s comic Locke & Key for a feature film

I probably walk by Stephen King‘s house once every couple of a week. It’s not on purpose or anything it’s just a convenient way to get to a friend’s house. Growing up near the author’s home for many years (as well as living in Bangor as an adult) means there’s always a chance you might run into the guy. My brother saw him at a gas station recently buying cream horns (coincidentally one of my favorite junk food snacks) and my mom actually almost hit him many years before his tragic accident because he was trying to cross the street while reading a book.

But I never know when his son and fellow author Joe Hill is kicking around town. His novels Heart-Shaped Box and Horns are fantastic but his comic series Locke & Key is just as awesome. There’s been a couple of failed attempts to bring the series to the big screen or television and Heat Vision has learned that Universal will be the next to take a crack at it, optioning the comic for a feature film. STAR TREK and TRANSFORMERS writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are producing the adaptation with Ted Adams, CEO of IDW Publishing.

Synopsis:

Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them, and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all.

I do wish that the television series had worked out but if there is going to be a movie adaptation of Locke & Key I’m perfectly happy with that too if they get it right. There’s a chance some of the violence could get toned down for the film (although I didn’t think it was too graphic in the comics I’ve read) since making it PG-13 would make the studio more money, especially since most of the main cast of the comic is young. I wouldn’t say Locke & Key as a film needs to be R-rated but I’d definitely prefer if it was.