For some time now, comic book creator Joe Hill has been playing with the idea of adapting his fantastical series Locke & Key for the screen. Initially, the plan was to make it a movie, but then a pilot was developed for the 2011 TV season that was never picked up, while Alex Kurtzman was working on a film trilogy. Updates on the latter have been few and far between, but whether or not that will ever officially happen, another TV attempt has received the green light.

Announced today, Hill, who created and wrote the comics, will be writing a new pilot as well as serving as executive producer with Ted Adams, David Ozer, David Alpert, and Rick Jacobs. Who knows if this attempt will stick, but IDW Entertainment is developing this project as a straight-to-series, so the powers that be seem confidence that the adaptation will strike a chord with fans.

The bare bones description of the comics is that it centers on a the Locke family and Keyhouse, a New England mansion “with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them” and “a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all.”

Based on a statement Hill provided for the press release, one can glean a general direction for the adaptation:

I love this story. The seven years I spent working on Locke & Key was the happiest creative experience of my life and there still isn’t a day when I don’t think about those characters and miss visiting with them. The six books of the series are very like six seasons of a cable TV series and so it feels only natural to bring that world to the little screen and to see if we can’t scare the pants off viewers everywhere.

There aren’t too many fantasy series on TV at the moment, and we’ve seen many more come and go. Even something like Constantine, which featured both supernatural and comic book elements, failed to stay on for very long. We’ve heard how even developing a project for the wrong network will curse a series before it begins. That said, this seems like the closest we’ve gotten so far to see Locke & Key finally adapted.