Netflix has released a trailer for its Locke & Key TV show. It’s been more than a decade since Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s award-winning Locke & Key comic books were published in 2008, and nearly as long since plans were set in motion to adapt their horror story for either television or film. After multiple failed attempts to do just that (ranging from a Fox TV pilot to a Universal movie trilogy), the project officially landed at Netflix in 2018. Numerous creatives worked on Locke & Key during that time, but the series that begins streaming next month was co-created by Meredith Averill (The Haunting of Hill House) and Carlton Cuse (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan).
Cast-wise, Locke & Key stars Jackson Robert Scott (IT), Connor Jessup (American Crime), and Emilia Jones (Horrible Histories) as the Locke siblings Bode, Tyler, and Kinsey, along with Darby Stanchfield (Scandal) as their mother Nina. Netflix only confirmed the show for a February 2020 release date a month ago, when it finally dropped the series’ official one-sheet. Now, with some four weeks to go before its premiere, there’s some Locke & Key footage to check out, too.
The Locke & Key trailer dropped online this morning, just as Coby Bird (who costars as Rufus Whedon) said it would on Twitter yesterday. You can check it out in the space below.
In terms of plot, Locke & Key follows Nina and her kids as they move to their ancestral home, Keyhouse, not long after the siblings’ father was (very mysteriously) murdered. The trailer doesn’t beat around the bush, either, and dives into the story from there, following the Locke children as they find a set of magical keys in the house that open (literal) doors to all sorts of magical adventures - until they awaken a malicious demon determined to steal them, anyway. Visually, Locke & Key looks impressive so far, with Keyhouse being brought to life through a combination of rich production design and sturdy CGI (at least by TV standards). The trailer doesn’t dive too deeply into the original comics’ themes about legacy, loss, and coming of age, so it remains to be seen if the show does similar justice by its source material’s narrative.
As with all Netflix Originals, it will also be interesting to see how Locke & Key fares in terms of viewership. Last year, series like The Umbrella Academy and The Witcher adaptations managed to attract a lot of attention through word of mouth, so there’s a chance Locke & Key will follow suit and appeal to more than just genre enthusiasts and fans of the original comic books (of which, obviously, there are many). Though, for every Netflix Original that hits it big, there are a two or more that are mostly ignored from the get-go and/or struggle to have much of a cultural impact after starting out strong. After all the fuss it took to happen, hopefully Locke & Key will prove to be worth the trouble.
Locke & Key begins streaming Friday, February 7 on Netflix.
Source: Netflix
