What happened with the pilot?
During Comic Con 2011, Shock had the chance to attend the Locke and Key panel discussing not only the pilot to the TV series that did not get picked up by Fox, but upcoming plotlines for the comic book.
The first thing that the creators of the comics and the TV pilot writer wanted everyone to know is that the show was not going to be picked up, there was no chance that will be picked up in the future and the pilot is pretty much the only thing that we’ll be seeing from a series based on the Locke and Key comics anytime soon.
Why? Because, explains Josh Friedman, the TV pilot writer, Fox did not understand what it could do with the series after the pilot. “We were the victim of our own vision,” Friedman says. “The pilot was so well done that Fox told us that we had made a movie, not a pilot.”
Okay, so the series isn’t getting a pick-up (yet). But if it did, what direction would it take? It would be based on the comic initially but would go off in its own direction, akin to what is being done with The Walking Dead on AMC. The series would be more about the mythology of the series rather than taking the actual storylines from the comics, said Joe Hill, one of the creators of the Locke and Key comics.
“It would be like Key of the Week. One episode would focus on one key and what’s special about it and the next episode would be about another and how it would work within the greater mythology of the series,” Hill said.
Friedman added that they had a pretty good idea what they would do with the series in the first season and plot-wise it would go through “Crown of Shadows” by the end of the season.
Is the idea of a “key of the week” something that Hill wants to take into the comic book form?
“We have always looked at the keys as dreams like in Sandman,” Hill said. “We do have this one big overarching story we have been working on since 2007, that will wrap up this year. We have also focused on individual keys and how it serves the larger mythology.”
One of the fans of the series asked Hill a question about the origin of the idea for the comic book. His answer was rather interestingâ¦
“The genesis of Locke and Key was my dislike of slasher films,” Hill said. “You go see these films and you have a collection of teenagers all of a single type of person: the jock, the nerd, the good looking girl. When these characters are killed off we cheer for Freddie or Jason or whoever. Locke and Key is an attempt to correct this. We spend 30 issues focusing on the emotional aspects of these characters and trying to figure out who they are and what drives them. You get time to know the kids and like them. Then we have the slasher in the last six issues. That is more emotionally powerful and more honest.”
Source: Peter Brown
