Netflix recently released the first trailer for Locke And Key, an upcoming series based on the graphic novels/comics of the same name by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez. For those who don’t know, Joe Hill is actually the son of horror maestro Stephen King himself. It is slated to premiere next month on 7 February 2020.

We recently received the opportunity to interview two of three showrunners and executive producers for Locke And Key; Carlton Cuse and Meredith Averill. They talked about how they managed to get the series out of development hell and how the series adapts the comics’ blend of horror and fantasy.

Q: Locke And Key has been through development hell for a while now. How did you manage to get it up from the ground and into production?

Carlton Cuse: I read the comics when it came out in 2008. I really loved it and thought that it was exceptional. It was emotional, and the genre stuff felt really fresh, not derivative of the twenty other things, which is really hard especially in the haunted house fantasy house space.

It was initially sold to some guy named Steven Spielberg if you’ve ever heard of him. Then it went through sort of a development period with a bunch of other producers.

About four years ago, I was having a meeting with my agent in New York on something else and he said he was heading out for a meeting on Locke And Key, and I said, wait, what, that comic is available now?

He said, yeah, the rights had reverted to Joe Hill, and I told him how much I loved it. That got passed on to Joe Hill. Joe Hill was a fan of the shows that I had done, so I got together with Joe and he was excited about working with me and I was excited about working with him. We started down a development path together and we had a few more twists and turns in the road.

The project went through a period at Hulu, then finally ended up at Netflix. When we sold it to Netflix, Meredith came on board and that was a really wonderful and important demarcation point. We sat down and showed it all to Netflix. Netflix has expressed a really strong commitment to making this.

With their support and resources, we really crafted the show that the episodes that you will see. It was a long path, but I think it’s one that allowed for a lot of time to think through a lot of the problems and how to adapt the show, how to make it work. I think all of those things ultimately worked for the good, and we’re really proud of what we ended up with.

Q: Horror isn’t something new for both of you since you’ve worked on shows like Bates Motel, The Strain, and The Haunting Of Hill House. What did you learn from those productions that you’ve brought into Locke And Key?

Meredith Averill: You know, I think, working on one haunted house show and jumping to another haunted house show. Apparently, this has become my brand. There are some definite similarities between them and that the house is very much a character. We’re dealing with this family that is coping with an immense amount of grief and guilt.

That is sort of where the similarities end between them. Our show is more on the fantasy axis, just a little lighter. Hill House was certainly much darker, but we do employ flashbacks to inform our present story and for surprising reveals about our characters.

In terms of structure, I would say that’s the one thing we brought over from that.

But it’s also that I like to tell stories in the non-linear kind of fashion so that’s an exciting way for me to tell stories and something that we brought over that I loved.

Q: How does Locke And Key stand out from other fantasy series out there?

Carlton Cuse: I think what Joe and Gabriel did in the comics is very original and I think even though we’ve remixed it, it still brings forth all these elements. Part of the reason I fell in love with the comics in 2008 is just a really cool interesting story.

It’s a little Harry Potter, a little Stranger Things, a little Chronicles Of Narnia, but at least to us, it’s still pretty original and fresh.

For people who like this genre of storytelling, I think it would be a really enjoyable experience.

Q: What was the biggest difficulty you had when adapting Locke And Key?

Carlton Cuse: I think some of the things that are the most imaginative in the comics, like the Head Key.

In the comics, you can literally open up the top of someone’s head and look inside and there’s this sort of clockwork. You know, incredible visual imagery.

That felt really extreme and totally very hard to pull off, so we had to imagine how we were gonna translate the Head Key to TV and do it in a way that we could afford to do on that sort of budget and schedule that we have for TV.

It was really about wanting to really show these things that were special, like the Head Key or the Shadow Key that were in the comics. However, given our resources and maintaining the tone that Meredith and I were going for in the show, I think that was a challenge.

The Head Key as seen in the official poster.

Q: What was your favourite scene that was brought to life in Locke And Key?

Meredith Averill: For me, it was something that Carlton just touched on, the Head Key. For all the challenges that it presented in terms of trying to translate that onto film, it also was kind of creatively really exciting to be able to talk about it in the room.

In our adaptation of it, when the key goes into the back of someone’s neck, a literal door appears and you can actually walk inside your own brain.

We got to have a lot of really creative discussions about, okay, if we looked inside Kinsey’s brain, what would that actually look like?

Using the foundation of their personalities to kind of build all these fantastic and surreal worlds that visually are some of our most memorable scenes in our season. A great thought in the writer’s room when we were discussing other people’s head that we had plans to go into and what they might look like.

I think that was some of the more exciting things from the comics that we got to adapt.

Q: Unlike other Netflix series (which sometimes takes several episodes to set things up), Locke And Key does all that in the very first episode. Why did you take this more traditional TV approach?

Carlton Cuse: I think part of that had to do with the lessons learned in some of the prior development. When I was in the writers’ room with Meredith, we said let’s not wait three episodes to introduce these characters, let’s set them up right in the pilot.

We were really confident in trying to put our foot on the accelerator pedal and really make sure that the pilot included all of these different elements that were going to be part of the show. It was representative of the series that we wanted to make.

Meredith Averill: No pun intended, but we wanted to ‘Locke’ you guys down right away at the end of the pilot.

That was the ‘Key’ to ‘Locke’ you guys down.

Sorry, it’s been a long day (laughs).

Q: Part of what made the comics so iconic & memorable was Gabriel Rodriguez’s brilliant artwork. Have you translated some of those visual elements into the adaptation?

Carlton Cuse: We are very grateful to the work that Gabriel Rodriguez did. If you see the show, the house is really big, I mean, the design of the house, the Keys, they were based on his designs.

We modified things a little bit here and there but he did such a great job of finding a tone in his drawings that is kind of between horror and fantasy.

It feels substantial, believable, has mystery and just this really cool quality to it. He’s really an amazing illustrator and it feels really helpful when you’re dealing with the production team and you have something that tangible you could show them.

It’s very easy to get on the same page if you’re all looking at a drawing of a house and you could sort of say, this is what we want to do and this is what we’d like, maybe change a little bit here and there, but it was really foundational to the whole series.

Q: How faithful to the source material will your adaptation of Locke And Key be? Will there be surprises even for fans of the comics?

Carlton Cuse: We don’t tell the entire story of the comics this season. We bite off a big chunk of it and we talked a lot of where we wanted to go. I think we got to a really good place. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but it doesn’t finish the comics’ story.

9. What is the cast of Locke And Key like?

Meredith Averill: Jackson (Robert Scott) was brought over from the original pilot and it’s because he is Bode (Locke) in every way. He’s described on the page of the pilot as a pop tart in human boy form. We think that’s the perfect description for both Jackson and Bode.

For Kinsey (Locke), one of the very first auditions we saw was Emilia Jones, who was this actress out of the UK and just popped off the screen for us. We think she’s gonna be such a star. As for Connor Jessup, we were familiar with his work on American Crime. He brought so much vulnerability and sensitivity to Tyler (Locke). We just love what he did with the part.

And then Darby Stanchfield as Nina (Locke), she brought such a warmth to Nina that we weren’t even expecting and now I think we write towards that now. The scripts can be great but if the casting isn’t right, it could’ve really gone wrong but we felt immediately even from the table read that they had such incredible chemistry and you really believe them as a family.

You know, that chemistry continues off-screen, they have grown to love one another and hang out all the time and have Sunday night Locke family dinners in Toronto. It’s just such a joy to see how their chemistry have really translated and I think that when you watch the show, you really feel that.

(Left) Emilia Jones as Kinsey Locke, (Middle) Connor Jessup as Tyler Locke, (Right) Jackson Robert Scott as Bode Locke.