I’ll admit, when I first heard Black Phone 2 was happening, I was skeptical. However, when I heard Joe Hill -- whose short story inspired the 2022 Blumhouse hit directed by Scott Derrickson -- was deeply involved, I became intrigued. Now, I know how involved he really was, and it's incredible. The Locke and Key creator recently opened up about how the idea for the new horror movie came to him and why he decided it had to be on the 2025 release schedule. And honestly, it’s the kind of storytelling instinct you only get when the original author is still deeply invested in their creation.

During a recent interview on The Last Podcast on the Left, Hill revealed that the spark for the recently released The Black Phone 2 came not from studio pressure or franchise ambition, but from one small moment in the first film. Hill explained that Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill’s first book-to-screen adaptation, was mostly his work, but everyone brought something to it:

It’s that kind of creative overlap between novelist and screenwriter that makes The Black Phone such an effective adaptation. However, when Hill first saw the movie on the big screen, he says he immediately knew the story wasn’t over. He continued:

The King Sorrow novelist didn’t have to go to space to find inspiration. Instead, he zeroed in on a single, seemingly minor detail from the first film. He recalled:

That kind of instinct to recognize story potential in a single visual choice is what makes Joe Hill’s involvement so exciting. Even the best horror franchises are typically born from financial success, not creative continuity. Honestly, most of the time, continuity is the last thing on anyone's mind when it comes to greenlighting a sequel. Despite that, in this case, the writer who created the world is the one extending it, and it’s clearly paying off.

If you ask Hill’s father, who just so happens to be world class horror writer Stephen King, he’ll tell you The Black Phone 2 outshines the original, and CinemaBlend’s own Nick Venable agrees. In his review, he called the sequel “haunting” and “hypnotic.” It seems the writer who first imagined the ghostly Grabber had the right instincts for bringing him back. After all, as the new movie reminds us, in this world, “dead” is just a word.

The Black Phone 2 hit theaters on October 17 with a strong box office opening. Be sure to check your local listings to find showtimes near you. Also, be sure to stream the film's 2021 predecessor now using a Peacock subscription.

With spooky season upon us (or here now, if you measure it by the availability of pumpkin spice lattes), there’s a whole bunch of upcoming horror movies on the way. But arguably the most anticipated is Black Phone 2, which we’ve been waiting for since we learned it was officially happening two years ago. While the first Black Phone movie was touted for bringing a freshly bloody take on the genre, the sequel is getting some welcome comparisons to A Nightmare on Elm Street – including with new comments from one of its stars.

Black Phone 2 Star Compares Ethan Hawke’s Grabber To Freddy Krueger

Mason Thames is back for Black Phone 2 alongside a number of his co-stars from the first movie, like Ethan Hawke, of course, reprising The Grabber, and Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies and Miguel Mora. When talking about the upcoming sequel with Entertainment Weekly, he said this about what’s to come:

As you might recall from the 2021 movie, Mason Thames’ Finney succeeds in killing the terrifying serial killer known as The Grabber by the end. So how can he return for a sequel? Well, since the whole premise of The Black Phone had to do with the line between the dead being open, Finney and his sister’s run-ins with him are not over. And, much like Freddy Kreuger, it seems like The Grabber can now haunt and cause harm in dreams.

Fans Have Been Comparing Black Phone 2 To A Nightmare On Elm Street, Too

Given that A Nightmare on Elm Street is thought of as one of the best horror movies of all time, it’s certainly a compliment for Mason Thames to compare the movie’s villain to the franchise. I mean, we’re still thinking about all of Freddy Kreuger’s gruesome kills even though the film series has been without a new entry since 2010.

But Thames comments echo what fans have been saying about Black Phone 2 since the latest trailer dropped on YouTube last week. Check out some of the top comments:

• “They turned Black Phone 2 into an 80s supernatural slasher like Nightmare on Elm Street and I'm all for it.” - @XMen-m1t
• “Freddy Krueger: I'm so proud of you, son... The Grabber: TY, dad…” - @nightponyinrface6009
• “I know many of us compared it to Nightmare on Elm Street after the first trailer, but....this REALLY elevates that, especially with the dreams, and the people getting thrown around, but then the people who are awake seeing no one. It really reminds me of the first death in the first NOES. I'm so hyped for this!!” - @h20delorian
• “Hey, if we can't get another Nightmare on Elm Street, I'll take this instead” - @SelfDescribedNerd

The Black Phone is based on a 2004 short story by Joe Hill, who is the son of Stephen King. Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill wrote the script for the movie adaptation, which earned $161.4 million worldwide against the modest budget of around $17 million. The second movie is based on an idea Joe Hill pitched to Derrickson and adapted by the same script team of the original. You can see it in theaters on October 17.

By the time he became known to the public as the son of celebrated horror master Stephen King, author Joe Hill had already made a name for himself as his generation’s… well, Stephen King. Some of the writer’s creepiest short stories — such as “The Black Phone” — and terrifying novels — like NOS4A2 — would go on to serve as the basis for some of the best horror movies in recent memory as well as a few great horror TV shows, too. 

Of course, those are just a couple noteworthy examples of how the gifted, widely acclaimed, and storyteller of a bit demented tales has caught Hollywood’s attention lately. The following is a guide to just about every one of the movies and TV shows that have been inspired by Joe Hill books — and one that is not based on his work, but does involve him in a fascinating, lesser-known way — along with a tip on how to find them on streaming right now.

The Black Phone (2022)

After a meek teenager (Mason Thames) becomes the latest prisoner of a notorious local child abductor (Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke), he discovers that he can use a disconnected phone on the basement wall to communicate with his captor’s deceased previous victims, who try to help him figure out his escape in 1970s Denver.

Why it is worth checking out if you are a fan of Joe Hill: Inspired by Hill’s short story of the same name (which was first published in the author’s 2005 short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts), The Black Phone is co-writer and director Scott Derrickson’s second collaboration with Hawke after Sinister, and one of the best horror movies of 2022, in the opinion of our own Eric Eisenberg.

Stream The Black Phone on Amazon Prime.

NOS4A2 (2019-2020)

A young woman (Ashleigh Cummings) discovers that she possesses an extraordinary ability that makes her a worthy opponent against a charismatic, but creepy, child predator (Zachary Quinto) with a few unusual abilities of his own.

Why it is worth checking out if you are a fan of Joe Hill: Yet another Hill-penned story that puts a supernatural twist on the topic of child abduction is his 2013 novel, NOS4A2 — the author’s own, unique take on vampire legend that inspired one of the best horror TV shows available on Hulu and one that also pays homage his father in a fun way.

Stream NOS4A2 on Hulu.
Buy NOS4A2 on Amazon.

In The Tall Grass (2019)

A quick road trip stop for a pregnant woman (Laysla De Oliveira) and her brother (Avery Whitted) becomes a never-ending nightmare after a young boy’s cry for help leads them to step into a high, wide, grassy field from which there is no escape.

Why it is worth checking out if you are a fan of Joe Hill: One of the first stories that Hill collaborated on with his father was the harrowingly claustrophobic 2012 novella, In the Tall Grass, which was adapted by writer and director Vincenzo Natali into one of the scariest Netflix original horror movies yet — thanks in part to a manic performance by Scream King Patrick Wilson.

Stream In the Tall Grass on Netflix.

Horns (2013)

A young, grieving man (Daniel Radcliffe) discovers one morning that horns have started growing from the sides of his forehead and, along with them, he has gained a dangerously powerful gift for human manipulation.

Why it is worth checking out if you are a fan of Joe Hill: The writer's second full-length novel — and one of his most haunting, heartbreaking, and devilishly humorous — is 2010’s Horns, which was made into one of the most underrated films by French Extremism pioneer Alexandre Aja and one of the many weird projects Radcliffe took on after he left the Harry Potter movies behind.

Stream Horns on Freevee through Amazon.
Stream Horns on Tubi.
Stream Horns on Pluto TV.

Locke & Key (2020-2022)

Three siblings (Connor Jessup, Emilia Jones, and Jackson Robert Scott) and their mother (Darby Stanchfield) move to their recently murdered father’s family home, where they discover a series of mystical keys that soon make them the target of a vengeful evil.

Why it is worth checking out if you are a fan of Joe Hill: In 2008 — in collaboration with illustrator Gabriel Rodriguez — Hill began dabbling in the world of comics, resulting in the IDW series, Locke & Key, which was later adapted into one of Netflix’s best horror TV shows by developers Meredith Averill, Carlton Cuse, and Aron Eli Coleite.

Stream Locke & Key on Netflix.

Creepshow (2019-Present)

Bizarre and terrifying tales about the likes of a haunted doll house, a suitcase that grants riches for a very strange price, a teenage girl convinced her brother is trying to kill her, and more are presented by a ghoulish hooded figure.

Why it is worth checking out if you are a fan of Joe Hill: So far, two of Hill’s short stories — namely the emotionally-charged creature tale “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain” and “Mums,” in which a mother’s legacy lives on in her plants in unexpected ways — have been adapted into segments on one of the best TV shows on Shudder, Creepshow, which is a fun anthology series spun off from a classic movie that the author has an interesting connection to.

Stream Creepshow on Amazon with a Shudder subscription.

Creepshow (1982)

Bizarre and terrifying tales about what consequences a lonely farmer faces after touching a meteor, a revenge plot that does not end well, a curmudgeon’s failure to live an infestation-free life, and more are presented by a ghoulish, hooded figure.

Why it is worth checking out if you are a fan of Joe Hill: Not only did Stephen King write and star in director George A. Romero’s beloved horror anthology movie, Creepshow, but his son — then credited as Joe King — was cast in the wraparound segments as a young boy named Billy, who gets help plotting revenge against his abusive father (Tom Atkins) from the Creepshow Creep.

Stream Creepshow on Kanopy.
Rent or buy Creepshow on Amazon.

How cool is it that Joe Hill made his acting debut in a movie that would one day inspire a TV show that takes inspiration from his own work? Maybe one day he will follow in his father’s footsteps and helm a reboot of King’s directorial debut, Maximum Overdrive. Whatever his next project is — hopefully an adaptation of his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, which has actually been in development hell for years — I am here for it.

Among Constant Readers, 2017 is remembered for the Stephen King renaissance in Hollywood, but 2019 was the year where we saw the industry capitalize. On the big screen, fans got to see Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s Pet Sematary, Andy Muschietti’s IT Chapter Two, and Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep (next week!), and the executives at Netflix got into the action as well. Having clearly been impressed with the reception for both Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game and Zak Hilditch’s 1922, the streaming service got back into the King adaptation game with the development of Vincenzo Natali’s In The Tall Grass.

The project initially started to get on its feet in 2015 – a rare year that saw the release of zero Stephen King adaptations. It was at that time that Altitude Film Sales started shopping In The Tall Grass, based on the novella of the same name co-written by King and his son, Joe Hill. Natali was attached to both write and direct, his name carrying a great deal of genre cred thanks to credits including Cube, Splice, and episodes of Hannibal, but initial efforts to get the film off the ground at the Cannes Film Market didn’t pan out.

As history shows, it was merely just a tad before its time. Almost exactly three years later (a little more than six months after the release of Gerald’s Game and 1922), the project was back at the Cannes Film Market, and Netflix seized the opportunity to make a new Stephen King movie. While there were early talks with James Marsden about starring that got derailed by scheduling conflicts, Patrick Wilson, Laysla De Oliveira and Harrison Gilbertson were officially cast as production began in August 2018, and a little over a year later In The Tall Grass was offered as a treat to stream just a few weeks prior to Halloween 2019.

There is a considerable amount of the film that sets it apart from its source material, but it’s a case where everything that’s added elevates the original story, and everything from the original story is still honored and treated well. It’s a freaky movie that sports one of the most gruesome moments in the history of Stephen King adaptations, and a fun subject for dissection in this week’s Adapting Stephen King.

What “In The Tall Grass” Is About

In the mid-to-late aughts, Joseph Hillström King – the son of Stephen King – attempted to pull the wool over the literary world’s eyes in Richard Bachman-esque fashion. Wanting to be a professional writer and hoping to avoid any kind of supposition of nepotism, he wrote and published a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, and his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, with an abbreviated version of his name. He nixed the “-ström” and the “King,” and the works hit store shelves with the author identified as Joe Hill.

What was not Richard Bachman-esque was how quickly the truth was revealed. While Stephen King was able to publish four novels in about seven years with his secret pseudonym, Joe Hill was outed as his famous father’s son just a month after Heart-Shaped Box’s release in early 2007. Thankfully, the news did nothing to derail Hill’s career, as he has spent the years since becoming a very successful writer in his own right – with a bibliography including books, short stories, comics… and collaborations with his dad.

The first King/Hill team-up arrived in 2009 when the two men co-wrote the novella “Throttle” – which was included in the Richard Matheson tribute anthology He Is Legend – and a few years later the father-son duo got together to pen “In The Tall Grass.” First published in two parts across the June/July and August 2012 issues of Esquire magazine, the story is reminiscent of “Children Of The Corn” in that it explores horrors to be found during a road trip through the vast emptiness of Middle America. Instead of being set in Nebraska, it takes place in Kansas, and instead of the terror coming from a group of murderous, youthful zealots, it comes from miles of seven-foot-tall grass.

Cal Demuth and his pregnant sister Becky are traveling across the country to San Diego to stay with their aunt and uncle until Becky delivers her out-of-wedlock baby, and trouble starts when they are driving past a field and hear the shouts of a young boy begging for help. The kid, who identifies himself as Tobin, says that he and his mother, Natalie, have been lost for days, and he asks Cal and Becky to rescue them by guiding them back out to the road. Believing that the boy and his mom are just a few feet away, the Demuths walk into the grass – but they get separated and immediately get lost. They try to call out to each other, but the location of their voices seems to change at random, and jumping straight up to see over the grass results in them seeing landmarks shift around with each attempt.

The circumstances are dire and terrible, and they only grow worse. Tobin’s father and Natalie’s husband, Ross, is also in the grass and he has gone fantastically mad – and the cause is a massive obsidian rock that sits in the middle of everything and takes influence over anyone who touches it.

How Vincenzo Natali’s In The Tall Grass Differs From Stephen King’s Novella

Stephen King and Joe Hill’s “In The Tall Grass” is officially described as a novella, but that term is perhaps a bit generous as it reflects on the work’s length. Unfortunately, “long short story” is a ridiculous way to label anything, so “novella” is what we’re stuck with.

This is a roundabout way of saying that “In The Tall Grass” is not “Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption,” and Vincenzo Natali had to exercise his creative muscles in adding to the material so that he could make a feature-length film.

The basic premise remains the same, with Becky (Laysla De Oliveira) and Cal (Avery Whitted) driving through Kansas and getting lured into the grass by Tobin (Will Buie Jr.) – though the siblings’ reason for traveling is changed, as the intention is to meet with prospective adoptive parents in San Diego instead of relatives. Natalie (Rachel Wilson) and Ross (Patrick Wilson) have roles that mostly reflect their counterparts in the novella, though the former’s role is lightly reduced while the latter’s is expanded.

Inarguably the most significant change that Natali makes with In The Tall Grass is the film’s use of Travis McKean (Harrison Gilbertson), the father of Becky’s unborn child. In the novella, he is only featured in a flashback/dream sequence where he rejects parental responsibilities, but the adaptation turns him into a protagonist. While on the road searching for Becky and Cal, he ends up getting lured into the grass and both meets Tobin and becomes a source of conflict between the siblings (due to the fact that Cal hates him for knocking up his sister). Every scene he is in does not have precedence in the source material.

Travis’ arrival adds more substance to the narrative, and it also ends up adding to the horror of being lost in the tall grass. Vincenzo Natali latches on to the idea of time working differently and sprints with it – turning the field into a realm of nonlinear chaos. Travis ends up somehow arriving both after and before Becky and Cal get lost, and events get repeated and looped back on.

Having touched the rock at the center of the field, Ross is hooked into this temporal shifting, and it adds to his monstrous behavior, as not only does he kill Natalie (as he does in the novella), but he also strangles and kills Cal multiple times. This ends up creating another change from Stephen King and Joe Hill’s novella, as it means that Cal never touches the rock – which further enhances Ross’ antagonist role.

In the original version of the story, it’s Cal and Tobin who end up feeding Becky her newborn baby (while also sharing in the meal themselves), but in the movie it’s Ross – who appears to Becky as Cal while she is in a hallucinatory state. Travis ends up killing Ross after Ross is blinded by Becky and she dies, and while Becky never touches the rock like her on-page counterpart, Travis does, and he ends up using the experience and the information he gains from it to save Becky and Cal by ostensibly sending Tobin back in time. It’s a wholly original ending.

With the changes that are made by Vincenzo Natali, there are some standout elements from “In The Tall Grass” that don’t get adapted at all. This includes a sequence where Cal tries and fails to light a fire; the dream with Becky escaping the grass and babysitting a young girl; Kansas locals moving the cars into the church parking lot; and the coda ending featuring a group of hippies getting lured into the grass during an impromptu picnic.

Is It Worthy Of The King?

Because it was released in between IT Chapter Two and Doctor Sleep, Vincenzo Natali’s In The Tall Grass isn’t remembered as the standout Stephen King adaptation of 2019, but it can be dubbed the most underrated. It gets a bit sloppy toward the end – with its vague introduction to the idea of “holes” in the grass, and the movie being broken up with a sequence with Becky, Cal, Travis and Cody arriving at an abandoned bowling alley – but it’s excellent and creepy as a claustrophobic cinematic experience.

While Children Of The Corn movies have failed to capture the eeriness of the titular crop, Natali and cinematographer Craig Wrobleski do a tremendous job trapping the audience in the tall grass and giving it powerful and foreboding presence. This is accomplished technically through the camera work and also the fantastic sound design that adds an extra dimension to the work and makes the environment all the more disorienting and haunting. Along with the terrific narrative tools that the writer/director uses to power the eponymous vegetation into a full nightmare, watching the movie will make anyone fear the wild grass they see along the sides of long stretches of highway.

In The Tall Grass isn’t an all-time great Stephen King movie, but it does stand among the best in recent years, and Vincenzo Natali’s treatment of the source material is particularly impressive. He has since added to the history of adaptations further by directing two episodes of The Stand streaming series (look for my column on January 4, 2023), but it would be easy to get excited about him directing movie or TV show based on a book from the canon.

How To Watch Vincenzo Natali’s In The Tall Grass

Like both Mike Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game and Zak Hilditch’s 1922, Vincenzo Natali’s In The Tall Grass was produced as a Netflix exclusive, and a Netflix exclusive it remains. Not only is the movie not available on any other streaming service, but it is not available for digital purchase at any online outlets. Furthermore, for those of you trying to build the Ultimate Stephen King Collection, it remains an irksome title, as it has not been given a release on physical media.

As noted all the way back at the start of this article, next week’s Adapting Stephen King will be doing a deep dive into the cinematic miracle best known as Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep – based on the novel of the same name. Look for the feature in the CinemaBlend Movies section on Wednesday, and between now and then you can discover all of my previous features by clicking through the banners below.

Horror fans have been anticipating The Black Phone’s arrival to the big screen. The adaptation of the 1994 short story of the same name by Joe Hill reunites Sinister director Scott Derrickson with Ethan Hawke as the leading man. Hawke plays the masked villain The Grabber, who takes young teen Finney (Mason Thame) as his latest victim. Critics have had a chance to screen the Blumhouse horror ahead of its June 24 release, so let’s check out what they have to say.

The titular black phone comes into play as The Grabber locks Finney in a cell that has a disconnected black rotary phone. The story takes a supernatural turn when Finney realizes he can hear the voices of the antagonist's previous victims over the phone and, meanwhile, his sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), uses her psychic visions to try to find her brother. Let’s take a look at what the critics think of the movie, starting with CinemaBlend’s review of The Black Phone. Corey Chichizola rates the horror 4.5 stars out of 5, saying that Scott Derrickson is a horror master, and this film proves it:

Mike Manalo of Nerds of Color would seemingly agree with the above assessment, grading the movie an A-. This review praises everything from the acting — both in the leading and supporting roles — to the score in what is so much more than your typical horror flick. It should be lauded as more of a coming-of-age blockbuster:

For at least one critic, however, the fantastical side of the plot did not add to the horror, but detracted from it. Owen Gleiberman of Variety says the movie feels more like a dark cousin to the comic book world, and he doesn’t find it particularly scary:

Matthew Mahler of MovieWeb agrees that horror fans looking for a straight scare fest might be a little disappointed, but this thriller is a dark and well-executed look at childhood and violence. The critic says director Scott Derrickson makes the story feel personal, which is effective because of how good Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw are in their roles:

Sam Stone of CBR says Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill’s expansion of acclaimed author Joe Hill’s short story is a success. They took a 30-page story and gave the characters a backstory and added to their emotional depth, which was executed well on the back end by The Black Phone’s talented cast.

It sounds like this Joe Hill adaptation should please moviegoers, as long as audiences know they’re in for something deeper than just tried-and-true jump scares. The Black Phone is set to hit theaters on Friday, June 24 and will be available for streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription on Monday, August 8. In the meantime, start planning your next trip to the theater by checking out CinemaBlend's schedule 2022 movie releases to see what’s coming soon.

Maximum Overdrive is one of the worst Stephen King adaptations, and it needs to be rebooted by Joe Hill. Of course, Maximum Overdrive is notorious for being campy, ridiculous and having very few redeemable qualities. Most King fans would rather it to stay buried in the '80s, but I don’t think it should be. I believe the concept has teeth; it just needs the right visionary to bring out its true potential.

Originally, I figured Guillermo del Toro would be the right director to tackle such a project, but since then, I’ve changed my mind. I think it should be Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son and heir apparent. Here are some reasons why.

Joe Hill Wants To Reboot Maximum Overdrive

So why should Joe Hill, of all the perfectly qualified directors, direct Maximum Overdrive? Because he wants to do it. That’s about as good of a reason as any. I’d wager many competent directors would balk at the idea of tackling this project, especially directors who have proven success with adapting Stephen King works, like Mike Flanagan.

If Maximum Overdrive is going to roar, it needs to have a director and a visionary behind it. Someone who truly believes the project can work and knows how to scare people half to death with it. When speaking with Bloody Disgusting, Joe Hill admitted he’d be up for directing Maximum Overdrive. Since he’s all for it, and since he likely knows his father’s works like the back of his hand, why not just give it to him?

Joe Hill Has A Great Idea On How The Reboot Should Be Done

Joe Hill pitched the idea that his Maximum Overdrive would be about the trucks becoming homicidal because of artificial intelligence, which tracks. In a world full of smartphones, smart homes, smart cars and artificial intelligence improving at a rapid rate, technology is increasingly moving outside our control. Whether it be a hacker infiltrating a system or a sentient intelligence working against humanity, the idea that trucks could suddenly turn against their masters doesn’t sound so ludicrous anymore.

Originally, the trucks in Maximum Overdrive went haywire when Earth passed through the tail of the Rea-M comet. As a result, trucks turned homicidal. Obviously that’s ridiculous. It’s fun, but still moronic and removes the scare factor from the equation because no one will believe that’s a thing.

So imagine for a second that in this Maximum Overdrive reboot, not only are trucks and cars not doing what we want, which would suddenly throw the world upside down, but they’re also killing people left and right, all because of a glitch in the automation system. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s scary stuff, and reportedly so does Joe Hill.

Joe Hill Is Just As Good Of A Writer As His Dad If Not Better

Officially named Joseph Hillström King, he decided to go by Joe Hill in 1997 to get out of the shadow of his world-famous father. Joe Hill has written four novels, two short-story collections and some comic books, among many other things. He’s also the recipient of the Ray Bradbury Fellowship and the Bram Stoker award. Needless to say, Joe Hill has writing chops.

Similar to his father, Joe Hill's writing veers toward horror, but he’s also dived into weird tales and science fiction. He has an uncanny ability to tell deeply emotional stories with characters you can empathize with, while putting them into horrifying situations.

He’s also boundlessly creative, coming up with compelling characters, addictive hooks and imaginative worlds and mythologies. One only has to experience Locke and Key or NOS4A2 to see that. With such a strong writing background, Joe Hill could easily adapt Maximum Overdrive to the screen and improve on it.

It Would Be Joe Hill's First Time Directing, Just Like His Dad

Stephen King’s first and final time directing a movie was Maximum Overdrive. From a marketing standpoint, Stephen King directing was a great ploy to attract an audience (especially diehard Stephen King fans), but King is an author and really didn’t have any business being behind a camera. Plus, at the time, he was on some serious drugs when filming, admitting he was “coked out of my mind.”

Truth be told, Joe Hill hasn’t directed anything either. Like his father, he’s primarily an author, having written 20th Century Ghosts, Horns and The Fireman, among other novels and short story collections. So at first glance, that could be a good reason why he shouldn’t take on Maximum Overdrive. But I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. Many first time directors, who seemed to have no business directing, have proven to be super capable.

While it’s hard to say what hand he had to play in this, Joe Hill has produced several solid adaptations of his own work to TV and film. Locke and Key and NOS4A2 have both been warmly received by critics, and I’d argue Horns is much better than most give it credit. Joe Hill was a producer on all of those projects and likely had given his own input. Taking the director's chair could be the next logical step in his career.

At the end of the day, Joe Hill directing Maximum Overdrive would also be following in his father’s footsteps one more time. The serendipity of it all would be almost too good to be true.

Joe Hill Might Be The Only One Who Could Redeem Maximum Overdrive

You don’t need to be a Stephen King fan to know that the author doesn’t have the greatest track record with his adaptations. Sometimes filmmakers hit the ball out of the park, like The Shining, Misery, and The Shawshank Redemption. But then there are movies like The Dark Tower, Cell and of course, Maximum Overdrive, which makes you wonder how things could have gone so wrong.

Lately, Stephen King has been seeing a renaissance of sorts, and some filmmakers, like Andy Muschietti and Mike Flanagan, have had success adapting his work. With the winds turning in his favor, and with a new generation discovering Stephen King, there’s never been a better time to adapt Maximum Overdrive. And let’s be honest, it needs redemption.

Of Stephen King’s works, Maximum Overdrive is often the most denigrated. But that also puts a reboot in a strong position, because everyone loves an underdog story. The idea of Joe Hill coming in to redeem Maximum Overdrive could attract a lot of people eager to see what he would do with the story.

Joe Hill Could Pitch The Maximum Overdrive Reboot To Netflix

Joe Hill and Stephen King have several TV shows and movies on Netflix. Joe Hill’s Locke and Key kicked off a successful first season, and both Stephen King and Joe Hill teamed up for their film In The Tall Grass. Needless to say, I’d assume they have connections with Netflix.

In my mind, Netflix is a perfect place for a Maximum Overdrive reboot. It has a horror audience, it reportedly allows more creative control for its filmmakers (something Joe Hill would need to carry out his Maximum Overdrive vision) and it would free Joe Hill from the pressures of having to overcome the extraordinary obstacle of performing well at the box office. On top of that, Netflix is known for taking projects other studios wouldn’t dare touch.

There’s no doubt a Maximum Overdrive reboot would be a tough challenge. Yet, who better to take it on than Stephen King’s son himself? Joe Hill wants to do it, he has an idea for it and he could wrap the idea up nicely for Netflix to sell to its established audience. What an event that would be! The stars are aligned here. Joe Hill just needs the motivation to carry it over the finish line.

The kids just can’t get enough of that Stephen King! It certainly feels like nobody can, judging by the number of his works that have been and are being adapted. Well, it looks like another King property is about to get the movie treatment, with two big factors of note being included. As it turns out, this new film, Throttle, is based on another book Stephen King co-wrote with his son, Joe Hill, and it’s headed to HBO Max.

Reported by Deadline, Throttle is a father and son story from this family-bound team. The novella is a road battle between a family-led biker gang and a tractor trailer with a maniac behind the wheel, all on a hot desert highway. From that basic summary alone, this sounds like an episode of Sons of Anarchy that’s remaking Steven Spielberg’s Duel, and that’s not a put-down. In fact, I’d pay to see that now.

As it stands, there’s no director on board for Throttle, but there is writing talent that’s been brought onto the project. The novella will be adapted by writer Leigh Dana Jackson, whose most recent credits include acting as co-executive producer on the Netflix original series Raising Dion.

Which makes the fact that Throttle is being adapted as an HBO Max original film all the more exciting is that there’s the potential that this film could get a limited theatrical release. But even if it doesn’t, a brand new Stephen King and Joe Hill movie could, at the very least, be headed to our TV screens. No matter how you slice that, it’s a win for fans of the King family.

This comes as Joe Hill’s hit AMC series NOS4A2 is about to enter its second season, and two other Stephen King projects, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Revival, have entered into development as well. That last announcement is particularly notable, as HBO Max is the streaming home base of the WarnerMedia family, and Revival is currently being written by Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan for Warner Bros.

It’s a good time to be in the King family business, for sure, so Throttle’s development isn’t all that surprising. The fact that a streaming platform is bringing the work of this best-selling team in front of the cameras is also to be expected, as last year’s In The Tall Grass provided some excitement for the folks at Netflix.

But it’s hard not to get excited about a project where either Stephen King or Joe Hill’s names are invoked. So while Throttle is currently in its early development phases, we’re ready to go wherever its vicious endgame takes us.

If you’re looking for some more King clan action in the immediate future, you can watch Joe Hill’s NOS4A2 when it returns to AMC for Season 2 at 9 PM ET, on Sunday, June 21. Or, you can catch Season 1 of The Outsider, in its entirety, on HBO’s streaming platforms.

Major spoilers for Locke & Key's first season are below, so heed this warning before reading on.

For around a decade, Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez's masterful comic book series Locke & Key eluded everyone who tried bringing it to live-action. Thankfully, Lost vet Carlton Cuse and The Haunting of Hill House's Meredith Averill were able to combine their powers to spin the emotional and fantastical horror drama into a fun and whimsical series for Netflix. Not that they were able to bring everything from Locke & Key's source material to the TV show.

Avid readers will notice right away that the TV show adapts the main thrust of the Dodge narrative, while sidestepping the more standalone stories (such as "Army of One," "February," and others). But this article is more concerned with elements that Locke & Key did bring to TV, only in vastly different ways than how things worked out in the comic book. Noting that this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list, let's look at four of the biggest changes Carlton Cuse and Meredith Averill made for Locke & Key's TV show. (Head here for more on how Season 1 ended for characters outside the Locke family.)

Using The Head Key

Easily one of the most fascinating magical objects within Locke & Key, the Head Key can be used to enter another person's mind, giving the user access to memories, emotions and other mental sundries. When a character got the Head Key treatment in the comic book, the top half of their skull would open up, allowing others to peer directly into the mind-state madness. While speaking at a Locke & Key press event held ahead of the series premiere on Netflix, co-developer Carlton Cuse explained why they changed things up for the TV show, saying:

All things considered, I think Locke & Key's creative team found a great way to handle the Head Key's powers without getting either too graphic or too CGI-heavy in the execution. Using personalized doors is a perfectly suitable substitution, and still allowed the show to keep the creepy visual of a keyhole opening up in people's necks. Below, Cuse explains how Kinsey's Head Key scene was influenced by Christopher Nolan's Inception.

My only regret about the Locke & Key TV show's Head Key is that it wasn't used on every single character. I could have watched an entire episode just showing Dodge or Bode going from one mixed-up mind to the next.

Kinsey's Fear Monster

One of Locke & Key's wildest moments in the early days came when Kinsey has Tyler use the Head Key in order to remove both her Fear and her Tears, rendering her incapable of feeling fear or sadness. The two creatures are sized appropriately, fitting both in Kinsey's head and inside a glass bottle, though they're quite powerful all the same. In the Netflix show, Kinsey pulls only her Fear out and buries it in the woods...until she retrieves it later in the season to attack Sam. When asked whether or not the creative team considered making Kinsey's Fear as small as it was in the comics, Carlton Cuse said:

It's not difficult to understand why Locke & Key's showrunners were keen to adapt Kinsey's Fear in a different way for the TV show. The concept of someone's fear being personified, so to speak, is already bonkers enough without the additional conceit that it's a small panicked blob. Creating the life-sized version of Kinsey's fear wasn't the easiest thing, either, with another actress being used, as opposed to Emilia Jones handling it. Here's how Meredith Averill and Carlton Cuse put it:

By the end of Season 1, it's not exactly clear what happened to Kinsey's fear, leaving the door open for its return in a potential second season, should Netflix order one up. Perhaps now that the manifestation has been introduced as a full-grown entity, there will be a way to shrink it down to comic size should it come back in the future.

Tyler's Differences

On the page, Tyler Locke comes across as far more of a typical teenager whose backbone is more angst than true bravado, and as a football player, also has more body girth than Locke & Key's Tyler portrayer, Connor Jessup. In contrast, the traditionally handsome Jessup plays a more introspective Tyler with a maturity beyond his years. (Not that his maturity is always utilized.) At the Netflix press event, Meredith Averill spoke to Jessup's casting factoring into the changes made from page to screen.

The co-showrunner also said that one of Connor Jessup's observations about the two Tylers aided in how the character was handled after that point. In Meredith Averill's words:

Being more soulful doesn't necessarily mean being more outwardly emotional, of course. Comic Tyler does hit more extreme levels, which the illustrated medium can more easily pull off. But by and large, Connor Jessup's performance makes it easy to ignore those differences.

The Big Dodge Twist

For Netflix's Locke & Key, showrunners Carlton Cuse and Meredith Averill adapted much of Dodge's original story, so if Season 2 happens, a lot of the antagonist's tale could be completely independent of the comic. (In as much as it can be with Joe Hill in the TV writers room.) Knowing that, they wisely changed up Dodge's approach to infiltrating the Locke family, while also refraining from revealing too much about Rendell and his friends' time with the Keys. The evil entity's possession of Lucas was heavily simplified for Locke & Key's first season, as were Dodge's motivations.

In the comic book, Dodge took Lucas' form and used the fake moniker Zach Wells to befriend Kinsey and learn about the Keys. TV viewers didn't see that happen, though, because the showrunners introduced the new character Gabe (played by Griffin Gluck). Gabe was shockingly revealed to be another one of Dodge's alternate forms, as granted by the Identity Key (with the Gender Key getting left out). Speaking with THR, Meredith Averill explained why she and Carlton Cuse decided to add another layer to Dodge's TV story.

The TV show did play up the recognizance factor whenever Steven Williams' Joe Ridgeway recognized "Lucas," which got the guy killed in the process. Nobody on the TV show has a clue about Gabe's true identity, though it can be assumed that the also-possessed Eden will learn about Dodge's shapeshifting soon enough. The twist was a clever one, and explained all of Gabe's bizarre earnestness with Kinsey throughout the season. Below, Meredith Averill talks about keeping the story straight so that everything lined up properly.

In the end, the Locke children and their friends believe that Dodge is locked away behind the Black Door opened by the Omega Key. It was actually Ellie that they'd thrown into the nothingness, with Dodge-as-Gabe content to keep building up his relationship with Kinsey in order to take control of that Key. In effect, viewers presumably won't see Felix Mallard portraying Dodge-as-Lucas Caravaggio in any future seasons, since there's no reason to take that form anymore. (Though he'd definitely be back for any flashbacks to Rendell's past at Keyhouse.)

Locke & Key is currently streaming Season 1 in its entirety on Netflix. Head to our Winter and Spring TV schedule to see what else is coming to the streaming service and beyond.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a bunch of different magic wands that showcase breathtaking, mind-blowing and not always initially meaningful powers? Replace "wands" with "elaborately constructed keys" and you have the basic premise for the upcoming horror-fantasy thriller Locke & Key, that comic book adaptation making its debut on Netflix after a long road to live-action that included cast changes and much more.

Just about everything you'd need to know about Locke & Key can be found below, minus the spoilers of course. (Those will be found elsewhere.) We've got a cast round-up, a quick look at the show's overall plot, the latest Locke & Key trailer, and CinemaBlend's review. But first, here's when everyone can get their own eyes on the new Netflix original.

Locke & Key Premiere Date: Friday, February 7 (3:01 a.m. ET)

All ten episodes of Locke & Key's first season will be available on February 7, hoping to give viewers more than enough chills to match the winter weather outside. Is there a key to change the weather? You'll have to watch to see.

Locke & Key Cast List

For the most part, Locke & Key is led by younger generation of actions, such as Falling Skies and American Crimes vet Connor Jessup and Utopia's Emilia Jones. Check out the lineup below.

You can read more about the aforementioned casting changes below, but you can check out the impressive list of executive producers and episode directors right now. Co-creators Carlton Cuse (Lost, Bates Motel) and Meredith Averill (The Haunting of Hill House) bring a lot to the table from a genre standpoint, and some of Cuse's familiar partners join him here, such as Lindsey Springer and Ra'uf Glasgow. They're joined on the EP front by the IT films' Andy and Barbara Muschietti, The Walking Dead's David Alpert and IDW Entertainment's Ted Adams, among others.

Episode directors include Vincenzo Natali (Cube, In the Tall Grass), Michael Morris (Better Call Saul, Preacher), Tim Southam (Lost in Space, Colony), Mark Tonderai (Gotham, Castle Rock), and Dawn Wilkinson (Empire, Riverdale). Also worth noting here is composer Torin Borrowdale.

What Is Locke & Key About?

Locke & Key is based on the highly acclaimed comic book series from writer Joe Hill – you know, Stephen King's son and NOS4A2 author – and artist Gabriel Rodriguez; in some ways, the TV show adheres quite closely to the source material's main narrative, with some changes obviously necessary for expanding into episodic television. The storyline revolves around the Locke family, who faced a life-changing tragedy when husband and father Rendell Locke was murdered, and thereby inherited a large and mysterious manor dubbed Keyhouse.

In short order, the Locke children discover the house is central to a set of magical keys that provide a variety of unbelievable powers, though it's rarely obvious how each key should be used. Though the keys bring happiness and wonder to Bode, Tyler and Kinsey (and even their mother Nina on occasion), they are being sought out by an evil entity who will stop at nothing to get them.

Locke & Key's Comic-To-TV Adaptation Took Around A Decade To Happen

The first issue of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez's Locke & Key was release in February 2008, and it wasn't long before Dimension Films acquired the rights to turn it into a feature. However, the company's financial situation likely led to them losing the rights to Dreamworks in early 2010, with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci steering the ship as producers.

Later in 2010, Locke & Key gained Steven Spielberg as a producer and shifted gears to become a TV show, with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles creator Josh Friedman brought in as showrunner. Fox, through 20th Century Fox TV, ordered up a Locke & Key pilot, which was filmed in early 2011, with cast members such as the Lord of the Rings franchise's Miranda Otto, Mayans M.C.'s Sarah Bolger, Carnivale's Nick Stahl, Lost Girl's Ksenia Solo, and musician Jesse McCartney. Fox announced in May of that year that it would not be moving forward with the pilot.

In 2014, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci were once again behind news of a Locke & Key film, only this time Universal Pictures announced that a film trilogy was on the way. That news only got fans excited for around a year, and it was announced that the film trilogy was no longer happening, and we'd be waiting a while longer to get any updates.

Joe Hill himself got behind pushing Locke & Key as a TV show with IDW in 2016, and after a lot of behind-the-scenes discussions were had, Hulu ordered up a pilot from Hill and Carlton Cuse, with Sinister and Doctor Strange helmer Scott Derrickson set to direct. The latter was later replaced by Andy Muschietti, but Hulu decided in March 2018 that it was passing on the pilot, which had cast Frances O'Connor (The Missing), Megan Charpentier (Mama), Nate Corddry (The Daily Show), Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon), Owen Teague (Bloodline) and Jackson Robert Scott (IT).

Just two months later, Netflix formally got involved with development on yet another revamped adaptation of Locke & Key, with Andy Muschietti staying on as executive producer despite having to drop out of directing. The entire cast was replaced, with Meredith Averill joining the creative team, and in July 2018, Netflix announced the series order. 18 months or so later, Locke & Key finally made it to the point where it could be released.

Locke & Key Season 1 Trailers

For those wanting more visual clues about what to expect from Locke & Key's first season on Netflix, look no further than the trailer below, which sets up the closed-off town of Matheson pretty solidly.

The trailer does a great job of making viewers aware that they're going to become just as obsessed with the concept of these keys as the characters do. As well, the Locke's home is right up there with The Haunting of Hill House's titular abode when it comes to supremely spooky TV houses.

Netflix also put out a second, shorter sneak peek for Locke & Key, which you can watch below.

The intense promo gives viewers an early look at just how many people the Locke kids bring into the key-driven chaos, and all without given away very much about the troubles that everyone is facing. The shadows at the end of it should set off some bells of excitement in fans of the comic book series.

Locke & Key Review

Being a fan of Stephen King since childhood, I immediately took to the wonder of his son Joe Hill's work, and Locke & Key has long stood out as my favorite project in his creepy oeuvre. (With "Pop Art" taking a close second.) For that reason, I was unable to go into the live-action Locke & Key with pure objectivity, but it didn't bother me a bit.

To start off with a little medicine before the jarful of sugar, Netflix's Locke & Key does not match up to the comic book source material. However, NO live-action adaptation could feasibly go beat-for-beat with Hill and Rodriguez's combined forces, which created a vast and imaginative world that taps into myriad emotions, cravings and styles across its six volumes. Thankfully, Carlton Cuse and Meredith Averill have delivered a lovingly crafted and instantly engaging adaptation that hits all the right spots and leaves you begging for more. This is what comic fans have been waiting for.

In one quadrant, Locke & Key is a drama about a family making a big location change to deal with the aftermath of their father's murder at the hands of a potentially deranged obsessive. In a second quadrant, the show is a fantastical mystery surrounding a set of hidden keys with quirky powers, as well as their connection to the Locke family and others in the small town of Matheson. The third quadrant showcases the horror-thriller side of Locke & Key, in which the still-mourning family is stalked by a relentless enemy who wants the keys for herself. For the fourth, a supernatural teen drama. Plus, all four quadrants are cloaked with dark comedy.

And let me tell you...you're going to wish you had some (or all) of these keys. Of all the things Carlton Cuse and Meredith Averill's creative team do right with this show, they perfectly replicated the illogical yearning to be invested in a hunt for magical keys inside a giant wooden house. Especially that Anywhere Key, which allows you to walk through any doorway around the world, so long as you've seen it before. Someone. Invent. Magic. Please. But I digress.

A Locke & Key series is only as strong as its central trio of siblings, of course. The majority of the time, stars Connor Jessup, Emilia Jones, and Jackson Robert Scott fully embody their respective characters (in oldest-to-youngest order) Tyler, Kinsey and Bode. Tyler broods and sulks appropriately, but he has reasons to, and he's also usually a kind person that worries about being a good brother. Kinsey experiences a major personality shift early on, due to some key usage, that transcends most female teenager stereotypes. Then there's Bode, whose precociousness never outshines his caring heart or how loud he gets when things aren't going his way

Many comparisons have and will be made between Locke & Key and other Netflix horrors such as Stranger Things and The Haunting of Hill House in terms of genre elements, but the three projects also share excellent casting for the younger characters. Jessup, Jones and Scott are so good at playing sometimes-annoying people without ever being annoying as a performer, which is a less common skill than one might imagine. (Admittedly, Jessup has been out of his 20s for a while, but still...)

Locke & Key fills out its universe with quite a few other talented actors beyond those three, with Scandal's Darby Stanchfield portraying the widowed Nina Locke, a recovered alcoholic whose wishes to understand her husband Rendell's murder are combatted by the fact that adults aren't so equipped to grasp magic. It's something that also affects Rendell's brother Duncan (Aaron Ashmore) – Uncle Dunc! – who doesn't remember much of his childhood at Keyhouse.

However, the memory loss didn't affect Rendell (Bill Heck) nor any of the others in a close-knit group of friends he kept as a teenager. They messed with the keys quite a bit and inevitably paid the price, with several of them dying in tragic ways. Perhaps those tragedies connect to the way Rendell was killed, or perhaps it's all just bad luck. (The former is the smart choice though.)

While there are certainly moments where Locke & Key falters – whether it's due to clumsy exposition or awkward interactions – the show makes up for them with some of the memorable visual flourishes, such as Kinsey's memory room and everything else involving the Head Key. If anything, my biggest complaint with Season 1 as a whole is that it understandably couldn't incorporate some of the comic's non sequitur moments and more outlandish keys. But maybe Season 2 or Season 3 can just be a bunch of one-off episodes.

Each opening title (beyond the fully animated set in the premiere) is itself a memorable visual flourish that offers a clue about which key will factor into the episode the most. And viewers will likely get hooked on the show's main theme, as well as every other bit of music that composer Torin Borrowdale put together.

Gloriously, the show doesn't come across as special effects soup, even though there are a lot of digital effects mixed in with the practical props. The quintet of directors that worked on the episodes pulled off some amazing shots at times, and I'm hoping Netflix puts out an art book for the show at some point. (Fun fact: Vincenzo Natali, who directed the first two episodes, had just previously directed Netflix's decent In the Tall Grass, adapted from the novella penned by Joe Hill and his pops Stephen King.)

The fact that Joe Hill actively worked on Locke & Key makes me wonder just how much some of the lesser-quality Stephen King adaptations would have been improved if the author had given more than his two cents about them. Maybe there's a key to a room where all those hypothetical movies and TV shows exist, and maybe I'm going to find it before anyone else. (Also, keep your eyes peeled for Hill's on-screen cameo.)

With a lot more to come from this story if Netflix makes it so, Locke & Key is a truly special series that will hopefully find a streaming audience as passionate as its comic fanbase. Haunting and genuine, emotional and wicked, and one hell of a rush, Locke & Key is the adaptation I was afraid would never come, so I'm sincerely hoping I don't wake up one day to find out this was all a fake memory implanted by some demon that's after my car keys.

Locke & Key Season 1 premieres on Netflix on Friday, February 7, at 3:01 a.m. ET. Check out our Winter and Spring TV premiere schedule to see all the other big shows on the way.

AMC is dialing up another high-concept horror series with the long-gestating supernatural thriller NOS4A2, adapted from the best-selling novel from genre "king" Joe Hill. NOS4A2 will bring to life the wildly creepy villain Charlie Manx, a demonic entity whose semi-immortality relies on stealing children and their souls. Going somewhat against type to portray Charlie is American Horror Story and Star Trek vet Zachary Quinto.

Don't go thinking this was just a by-the-numbers gig for Zachary Quinto, either. The actor brought dedication and ideals of legitimacy to the malice-spreading role of Charlie Manx, and his prep work actually helped shape the overall characterization. Speaking with CinemaBlend about all things NOS4A2, showrunner Jami O'Brien had nothing but kind and complimentary things to say about Quinto.

As viewers will see, and as it's been made apparent in the trailers and promo footage, Charlie Manx's preferred appearance is that of a well-coifed man in his 30s or 40s. However, things start to go dramatically south whenever he's in need of more children to populate his haunted world of Christmasland, where they can be "happy forever." (Anyone dealing with summer heat would also find much solace in winter wonderlands.) Thus, Zachary Quinto gets to play Charlie in various capacities across different timelines, and it sounds like he put a lot of thought into that concept.

Having seen the first six episodes of NOS4A2, I can confirm that Zachary Quinto thoroughly owns the role of Charlie Manx, imbuing the villain with the menace and charisma of a friend trying to get you to get drunk for the first time, or else he'll kill you. It's a performance that works within NOS4A2, but would probably also feel at home in a 1940s production. The timelessness is balanced by Ashleigh Cummings' co-lead Vic McQueen, an of-the-present teen whose tattered home life leads to the discovery of her own supernatural gifts.

Showrunner Jami O'Brien, who cut her teeth at AMC on Hell on Wheels and Fear the Walking Dead, told me there was a specific angle that Zachary Quinto brought to Charlie Manx that helped shape the way O'Brien viewed the villain. Here's how she put it:

In the scheme of things, it's mightily impressive for Zachary Quinto to get namechecked with Joe Hill's novel and graphic novel (illustrated by C. P. Wilson III) in citing the villain's biggest influences for his TV transformation. The notion is natural enough to glean from watching the AMC series, in which Charlie Manx's invasiveness is akin to that of a horror movie monster like Jason or Freddy, as opposed to him tracking his prey as a kidnapper or serial killer might.

Charlie Manx invades both spaces of the world and spaces of the mind. When he arrives somewhere in his unmistakable mode of transport, the Wraith, he's there to get shit done and to make others aware of the shit he's getting done. Charlie probably wouldn't have made it to the age of 140 years old if he approached situations more passively, although he meets his match in Vic McQueen.

Author Joe Hill, who also executive produced the NOS4A2 TV show, told CinemaBlend that Zachary Quinto was just as invested in Charlie's physical performance as he was the emotional and mental aspects. In Hill's words:

As bothersome as it is to watch the genial actor's more hideously evil side in focus for NOS4A2, it's awesome that Zachary Quinto was just as committed to getting gnarly on screen, and boy does he look monstrous from time to time. Though never in an over-the-top way, which is a credit to special makeup designer Joel Harlow and the rest of the makeup and effects teams. It'll definitely take some masterful efforts for anyone to lock down a more horrifying role for Zachary Quinto in the future.

Of course, just because Quinto's Charlie is a deadly nightmare sometimes doesn't mean he isn't also shown in different lights. He does claim to be taking only children from broken homes, which basically makes him the Robin Hood of vampires, right? Charlie can also be quite suave and debonaire when the situation calls for it, even if everything is only temporary. During our talk, Joe Hill reflected on this side of the character, saying:

Given that Charlie Manx is probably the least sympathetic character Zachary Quinto has ever played, the NOS4A2 ghoul will likely leave a bad taste in a lot of viewers' mouths. But it's a bad taste that his fans won't soon be forgetting, especially if AMC keeps NOS4A2 going for multiple seasons the way Jami O'Brien and Joe Hill are hoping.

NOS4A2 Season 1 debuts on AMC on Sunday, June 2, at 10 p.m. ET. Those who subscribe to AMC Premiere, however, can binge the entirety of the first season at once, while also taking in an exclusive digital short.

The road of Joe Hill's horror novel NOS4A2 making it to the small screen was long and uncertain for quite a while, after news broke in 2015 that an adaptation was in the works. Now, more than three years after that news first broke, NOS4A2 is set to premiere on AMC.

Not all adaptations are satisfactory to authors, with Stephen King's distaste for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining as a famous example. Fortunately, this is not the case with NOS4A2 and Joe Hill. The author recently spoke with CinemaBlend about his book coming to the screen, and he shared everything he loves about the upcoming series. Let's start with his feelings about the portrayal of the villain:

Zachary Quinto of Star Trek and Heroes fame tackles the role of the dastardly Charlie Manx for NOS4A2 (pronounced "Nosferatu"). The show hasn't yet premiered, so potential fans can't evaluate Quinto's performance off of any more than the trailer, but Joe Hill's comments are definitely promising.

On NOS4A2, Charlie Manx apparently won't be a one-note villain who simply goes after children. He'll deliver wit on top of the scares, and it sounds like Zachary Quinto may have been the perfect pick to play Manx.

Of course, as any NOS4A2 book fan knows, Charlie Manx is only one half of the pair of characters that drives the action. The other is Vic McQueen, played by Ashleigh Cummings. Joe Hill shared his thoughts on Cummings as well:

Vic is a troubled character with a quite unique set of powers in NOS4A2, and Joe Hill's words indicate that Ashleigh Cummings is perfectly capable of delivering the nuances of Vic. The promise of chemistry is certainly a good thing, as even a stellar performance can flop if the actor isn't generating any sparks with any other actor.

The first season will consist of 10 episodes, so there will be a wait before viewers can find out what precisely Joe Hill means about her heartbreaking work in the final three episodes.

Joe Hill isn't quite as hands on with AMC's adaptation of NOS4A2 as Neil Gaiman was for Good Omens, for example, but he was a collaborator and quite confident in who was tasked with producing the book for live action television. Hill shared his thoughts:

Jami O'Brien is already a veteran of hit AMC shows, thanks to her work as an executive producer on both Hell on Wheels and Fear the Walking Dead. She also wrote a couple episodes of the zombie apocalypse drama, so she knows her way around a genre TV series on AMC. And she has been connected to NOS4A2 for several years already.

If the author of the source material endorses the writer who penned an adaptation script, that should count as proof that book fans can enjoy the TV show. If Joe Hill can do it, surely his fans can do it, right?

While Joe Hill is clearly quite excited about an awful lot, he was ultimately able to pick one thing he's the most excited about. Here was his pick:

Christmasland isn't going to be quite as jolly as it sounds for the kids who wind up there after falling into Charlie Manx's hands! It's also one of the most unique elements of Joe Hill's novel, so if he's speaking highly of how the show handles it, I think book fans can be confident that they'll get something truly special out of the TV show.

And hey, maybe if NOS4A2 gains enough of an audience in Season 1, it will get that Season 2 to delve into the Wraith storyline. Recent seasons of The Walking Dead haven't delivered the kind of numbers for AMC that it once did, so the network would undoubtedly love another horror series that scores a big audience.

Only time will tell if NOS4A2 has what it takes to be AMC's next big hit. A second season of The Terror is on the way, not to mention the next season of Fear the Walking Dead. NOS4A2 isn't the network's only shot at cornering the horror market, but it definitely has a chance.

NOS4A2 premieres Sunday, June 2 at 10 p.m. ET on AMC, following the Season 5 premiere of Fear the Walking Dead. If you're an AMC Premiere subscriber, you can catch the first three episodes streaming now.

Fans have been waiting to see an adaptation of the famed graphic novel series Locke & Key on screen for many years now. It's been in one stage of development or another as a TV show or movie for almost a decade, and when Hulu stepped in to try again in 2017, it seemed like the story had finally found a home. Alas, the pilot that was produced for that show was passed on, but Netflix decided to try its hand at the creepy story and is now hard at work on Locke & Key, and two of the main characters have just been recast.

First up, the young lady at the top of this article, Emilia Jones, will now be taking on the role of Kinsey Locke. Jones has been on quite the roll since her first TV part in House of Anubis in 2011, and has racked up 19 credits including her work on Locke & Key. Jones has also shared her talents in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Doctor Who, Utopia, Wolf Hall, High-Rise and Brimstone.

When Netflix picked up the project this July for a 10 episode order, much of what was done with the Hulu pilot that had been produced was scrapped, including many of the cast. While acclaimed actors Danny Glover and Frances O'Connor had signed on to star or appear in some fashion, Netflix wanted to go in a different direction, and, according to The Wrap, the only actor to stay with their role from that Hulu effort will be Jackson Robert Scott, who is still slated to star as Bode Locke.

The second of the recast Locke & Key siblings will be played by Connor Jessup, who is, obviously, taking on the part of Tyler Locke. Jessup made his TV debut on The Jon Dore Television Show in 2007, and has since appeared in The Saddle Club, King, Falling Skies, and American Crime, among other shows and movies.

Locke & Key fans who might be worried that this project could still fall apart somehow, can likely calm themselves. The series is being executive produced by Calton Cuse, who filled the same role on the Hulu version of the show, and has played a huge part in bringing some of the freakiest shows to television in the past few years. He's served as executive producer for Lost, Bates Motel, The Strain and Colony among many others, and will also work as showrunner alongside Meredith Averill. Another point in the favor of Locke & Key is that Cuse worked with writer Joe Hill, who created and wrote the graphic novel, to bring his story to the small screen.

Joe Hill's fantasy / horror series, which ran from February 2008 through December 2013, focuses on the three Locke children, who move to their father's ancestral home after his murder and find out that the house has magical keys which can grant them a wide variety of powers if they use them in the correct doors of the home. Sounds fun, right? Well, there's also a scary demon who wants the keys, so the kids are forced to make sure this creature can't get its devious hands on the keys or the power they hold.

There's no air date set for Locke & Key just yet, so stay tuned to CinemaBlend for the latest news. In the meantime, be sure to check out our midseason premiere guide and Netflix premiere guide to see what will be coming to TV in the new year.

AMC has been trying to keep horror fans of The Walking Dead coming back to the network for reasons beyond the zombie series, and it's been moderately successful with Fear the Walking Dead and its newest series The Terror. Now, AMC is bringing another horror-based show into its programming as the network's former white whale is finally getting a premiere date. That's right, Joe Hill's NOS4A2 is finally happening for real this time, and it sounds as though things are already off to a great start.

NOS4A2 will tell the tale of Vic McQueen, a female artist with a supernatural ability to track Charlie Manx, a supernatural killer who feeds on the souls of children. Once he's done the feeding, Manx then puts what's left of the children in a world of his imagination called Christmasland, which is far less pleasant than its name would imply. AMC is co-producing the supernatural-horror series with Tornate Television and is planning for the show to premiere with 10 episodes at some point in 2019.

Joe Hill, the author of NOS4A2, will serve as an executive producer on the series. The show was created for television by Jami O'Brien, whose previous work with AMC includes co-executive producer credits on Hell On Wheels and Fear the Walking Dead. O'Brien will also serve as the showrunner and hopefully capture the same element of fear that earned the novel a Bram Stoker Award nomination for best novel. Fans can expect as much, though, as history indicates that a good number of adaptations that develop from Joe Hill's family bloodline tend to be successful.

That sentence may not make a lot of sense to those who don't know the author's history and his full name: Joseph Hillstrom King. Hill, the son of writer and master of horror Stephen King, has used an unassuming pen name for years to try and succeed apart from his father's past merits, and he's had a great deal of success doing so. In addition to his upcoming television adaptation of NOS4A2, Hill has been responsible for other popular works like horror comic book series Locke & Key. Talk of a NOS4A2 series has been going on at AMC for two years now, and now with the series currently in development, Hill fans might not feel so disappointed as the news of Hulu decided to pass on the Locke & Key adaptation.

NOS4A2 will premiere on AMC sometime in 2019. For more information on other shows set to air in the near and distant future, head on over to our midseason premiere guide and summer premiere guide. For more on AMC, check out what the network is doing to celebrate the upcoming crossover of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, click here.

Thanks to critically adored prestige dramas like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, AMC became a channel where every potential new project had a chance to explode. No bigger explosions happened than The Walking Dead's arrival and subsequent ratings monopoly, and even though the companion series Fear the Walking Dead was birthed from it, AMC has somehow failed to dip back into the horror genre. Thankfully, that hiccup appears to have been cleared away, as it's been announced Joe Hill's fantastically haunting novel NOS4A2 is now on the fast track for straight-to-series development.

How "fast" that track will be is certainly up for debate, since AMC has technically been dancing around bringing NOS4A2 to TV for a year and a half now. But there was really only one brief update on the project since the tail end of 2015, so we'll assume that this announcement is a sign of very good things to come, and that Charlie Manx isn't just sitting inside his Rolls Royce and thriving on our doomed hopes for this project.

While it's not exactly clear what was being done with NOS4A2 in recent months, the key shift in direction here comes with the opening of a writers room to be fronted by the previously tapped writer and executive producer Jami O'Brien, a veteran of AMC's Hell on Wheels whose credits also include the aforementioned and soon-to-return Fear the Walking Dead. The goal of the writers room will be to crank out a number of episodic scripts so that AMC's execs can review them and decide if NOS4A2 is worth the efforts to produce a full season. It's a pre-series model that is becoming more popular in places where producing pilots isn't feasible.

Joe Hill, the noteworthy son of horror legend Stephen King, crafted a story like few others with NOS4A2, and this is just the kind of twisted and creeptastic world that a channel like AMC could make as lush as our imaginations pictured it. The story centers on Vic McQueen, a mother with strange and dormant talents, whose son becomes the target for one Charlie Manx, an intensely frightening supernatural killer who takes children to his sordid "home" of Christmasland. It's a crazy story through and through, and both Vic and Manx are insanely strong characters that are deserving of top-notch talent, should the project make it to series.

Beyond NOS4A2, AMC is also going the writers room route with two other projects. One is another adaptation, this time for Silent History -- the app and novel created by Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby and Kevin Moffatt -- which tells the story of children who grow up with some very unique skills, though without the ability to grasp language. The second is Pandora, a mystery-thriller that splices together three different stories in a world where the Internet has been hit with a malware virus that leads to many dangerous and dark secrets leaking out into the world. They both sound decent, but I'm definitely hoping for more scares to come to AMC in the future.

While we're obviously not sure when the next update on NOS4A2 is coming, the writers rooms are going to be plugging forward for a set amount of time, at which point a decision will be made. Here's hoping we're all terrified and nestled into Christmasland by this time next year. In the meantime, embrace the relatively recent embrace of genre storytelling, and head to our summer TV schedule to see what the coming months have to offer on that front.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and all the rest. This truly is the season to be thankful for everything, as Joe Hill’s stellar 2013 novel NOS4A2 is in the process of being developed into a TV series. And not just for any run of the mill network, but for AMC. This is absolutely a match made in heaven, and there’s a certain Rolls Royce in the parking lot with its engine running.

Nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, NOS4A2 is the time-spanning novel that mostly centers on Vic McQueen, a woman who has for years been gifted with a particular and rather unexplainable talent for finding lost things. She is also finding that the power is making her life worse, but there’s still one more search she needs to finish, and it involves her son and an evil psycho named Charlie Manx that has survived for many years on the souls of others. The story taps into a large range of different kinds of fears, and the prospect of seeing Manx’s Christmasland setting on TV is a present too large to fit under any tree.

At this point, the development process is in its earliest stages, and AMC is trying to track down a writer for the adaptation, according to Deadline. Unless Hill is too busy, which is possibly the case since his next novel The Fireman is being published in five months, I can’t imagine why the network wouldn’t just put this project entirely in his hands. Nor why he wouldn’t want to be the one to be at the helm to make sure it turns out right. So we’ll just assume he’s too busy, or that he doesn’t want to spend another chunk of time with Charlie Manx on the brain. That has to be troubling.

Joe Hill, who is famously the son of horror maestro Stephen King, is no stranger to budding TV projects. He was most recently taking on a potential reboot of the horror anthology Tales from the Darkside for The CW, but they passed on it. He’s also one half of the creative team behind the extraordinary comic series Locke & Key, which has flipped around from produced-but-ignored TV pilot to potential feature, and now it’s apparently back on the TV side of things.

On the big screen, only Hill’s 2010 fantasy horror Horns has made it to full feature-dom as a 2014 feature from Alexandre Aja. The rock-infused 2007 novel Heart-Shaped Box was supposed to become a Neil Jordan flick, but that faded away and is back to basics at Warner Bros.

As the home of The Walking Dead and (formerly) of Breaking Bad, among other quality series, AMC could be a great place for NOS4A2 to wind up. Let’s just hope all the pieces fall into place and no coal gets into our stockings.

With new adaptations of It and The Stand in the works from major Hollywood studios and talented, in-demand filmmakers, Cary Fukunaga and Josh Boone respectively, it’s not a bad time for Stephen King adaptations. And we can add one more to the list, as Splice director Vincenzo Natali is bringing In the Tall Grass to the big screen.

Talking to Screen Daily, Natali revealed that not only will he direct In the Tall Grass, he’s handling screenplay based on the novella written by King and his son and fellow horror writer Joe Hill. Now available as an e-book, the story originally appeared in the pages of Esquire in two parts back in 2012.

Described as a horror road trip, In the Tall Grass follows a young man named Cal DeMuth and his pregnant sister Becky. While driving through Kansas, they hear a boy crying out for help in a field of, you guessed it, tall grass. If you have any familiarity at all with horror as a genre, you can imagine what happens next. When they stop to see if they can help the young lad, they find themselves in a dangerous and unexpected situation. You probably saw that much coming. Natali goes into more depth, saying:

This is a smaller, more limited-in-scope story, with what sounds like a similar size production planned, and there’s been some discussion around these parts of how the small-scale creepiness of the tale will translate to the movie screen. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s this trio. King, as you’re well aware by this point, is the most famous horror writer alive, maybe ever, and Hill is no slouch himself. If you haven’t read his comic Locke & Key or novels like NOS4A2 and Horns, you should do so immediately, or at your earliest convenience.

Natali is known for films like Cube and Haunter, but has also done a lot of TV work over the last few years on shows like Hannibal, Darknet, and Hemlock Grove, all of which are eerie as hell. But he’s also working from strong source material and has a good start in that regard. As Natali says:

That’s certainly promising. Right now there’s no proposed timeline being offered for In the Tall Grass, but the producers are heading to Cannes to shop around the pre-sale rights to the film, so once the financing is lined up and in order we’ll likely hear more about this.

Television trends are usually hit or miss with me, but I could not be more excited about the recent dual-headed obsession with horror series and anthologies. The CW is bringing those two concepts together for one of the more exciting remakes I can imagine, as they’ve given a pilot order to a reimagining of the excellent 1980s anthology Tales from the Darkside. The CW just keeps getting better and better. Says the guy who hasn’t been a teenager in a long time.

The fact that this particular brand of off-the-wall horror has the potential to come back full-time is outstanding, and it’s being written by Joe Hill, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author behind such superbly odd novels as Heart-Shaped Box and Horns. He also happens to be the son of Stephen King, so you know that his imagination is pretty vast. Check out his short story collection 20th Century Ghosts, particularly “Pop Art,” for a good idea of where Tales from the Darkside might go in his hands.

Hill, along with his co-executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci first started developing the reboot back in November 2013, with basically only a Comic Con update between then and now to let people know what was happening. According to Hill, they’re approaching this modern version knowing that today’s audiences are more interested in anthology stories that connect, over those fully exclusive of one another. (Ex.: Ryan Murphy’s “reveal” that all the seasons of American Horror Story have been related all along.)

The original Tales from the Darkside ran from 1984-1988, spawned a feature anthology, and had an opening theme that instantly made everyone who heard it feel like a Peeping Tom looking into another dimension. It often adapted stories from the masters of the genre, such as King, Clive Barker and Harlan Ellison, with tons of guest stars. Filmmakers like George Romero and Tom Savini got behind multiple episodes, and this series was often more about monsters and other weird things rather than the serial killers and vengeful husband-murdering wives of other shows. This mask gave me such heebie-jeebs as a kid.

According to Variety, The CW ordered two more pilots, both from established TV vets. Vampire Diaries showrunner Julie Plec has Cordon, a remake of a Belgian series centering on a city-wide epidemic in Atlanta that puts the city under quarantine, stranding those outside the danger zone. Californication creator Tom Karpinos wrote the pilot Dead People for Warner Bros. TV and Bad Robot, and it’ll follow a cab driver who is both skilled at being an alcoholic and talking to ghosts following a near-death experience.

No word on when any of these dark projects will go into production, but the quicker Tales from the Darkside comes back into our lives, the more doctors will have to worry about people having night terrors.

For more than a decade, French director Alexandre Aja has been delivering scares, gore and occasionally, a bit of dark humor with films like The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha and more recently, the feature adaptation of Joe Hill's Horns. But how does being French impact his perspective when telling American horror stories?

Vague but notable Hills Have Eyes spoiler ahead!

We asked Alexandre Aja about his perspective as a French director making American horror films when we sat with him during Comic-Con earlier this year to talk about Horns. One of the first things Aja had to say on the subject had to do with the surprise he experienced when he saw how American audiences perceived Aaron Stanford's character Doug Bukowski in The Hills Have Eyes. Apparently, we were rooting for the wrong character -- or characters as it were. As Aja explained it, he wrote the remake of The Hills Have Eyes being "this New York guy" who would've hated a family trip through the desert in a trailer. From the sound of it, he saw that guy as the hero of the story and wasn't prepared for American's to have a different view...

At the start of the film, many of us might not have guessed that Doug would be the one to rise up as the hero in The Hills Have Eyes. But that's part of what worked so well about the movie. Being able to surprise viewers is a tricky task, particularly with a genre that regularly aims to shock us. Throughout the movie, we really start to wonder if anyone's going to walk away from the desert-set nightmare.

Is being an outsider to the U.S. an advantage in that respect? As Aja explained it, it isn't as though he was unfamiliar with American pop culture before coming here to make movies. He grew up watching American movies and TV shows and listening to American music. "Everything is mostly coming from America," he explained. "And I love America." But it sounds as though he does see the advantages of looking at U.S. culture from an outside perspective...

His perspective is just one of the things he has going for his films. Variety and a willingness to take a different approach with each movie is another. If Alexandre Aja is trying to run the gamut within the horror genre, he's doing a fine job of it. The Horns director continues to surprise us with films that stand out as both entertaining and varying degrees of terrifying. The Hills Have Eyes tapped into pure terror and some seriously stomach-turning moments, while Piranha aimed for dark humor and gore galore. Horns is more suspenseful with a twisted, sometimes darkly humorous edge. Horns is different from Maniac and High Tension, and that's no accident.

"I don’t want to be redoing the same movie again and again," Aja told us. "I feel that somehow when you do a horror movie, you can end up doing the same movie again and again. It can end up being like the guy who was doing the haunted house movies, the guy was doing all the survival movies."

Aja went on to explain that he likes the challenge of doing something completely different from everything he's done before, and that's demonstrated in his body of work.

Photo Credit: Horns Facebook

As for Horns, the film stars Daniel Radcliffe as a man living in the aftermath of his girlfriend's brutal murder, and Aja describes the story as a fable and "a dark version of It's a Wonderful Life." And it sounds like the mix of genre appealed to him.

As you'll see when you watch Horns, if you haven't already, the film mixes horror with humor and suspense, as Daniel Radcliffe's Ig Perrish sprouts a set of horns, which give him the ability to draw people's darkest secrets and urges from them. From what Aja says, it sounds like he was eager to tackle the tonal range of Joe Hill's story and allow viewers to experience all of those genre shifts without being pulled out of the story...

Beyond Horns, which is already available On Demand, and arrives in theaters this Halloween, Alexandre Aja has a number of projects coming up, including a producer credit on Gregory Levasseur's The Pyramid and he's working on a Scanners TV show that's in development. He's also trying to bring Japanese Manga series Cobra to the big screen.

In terms of what he's reading, at the time of the interview, Aja was actually in the middle of reading Hill's horror NOS4A2. I asked if he saw that one as a potential horror-Christmas movie, but Aja thinks it might work better as a miniseries. "It's so rich and big," he said, of the 2013 novel. "It's hard to picture just a movie."

Aja also mentioned being a fan of Locke & Key and The Cape, the latter of which he described as "an absolutely amazing take on the superhero, very dark side."

Is Alexandre Aja up for bringing another of Joe Hill's stories to the screen? He didn't commit to anything specific, but it sounds like he's definitely up for working with the author again in the future...

Catch Horns in select theaters starting October 31.

There are few movies I’m looking to with the same amount of fervor that I have for the upcoming Universal feature adaptation of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key. It’s almost as palpable as the pages the comic is printed on. And so it’s no surprise that I, like many others, am worried that this feature may fall on the same chopping block as the proposed TV series from super producers (and so-so screenwriters) Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who have stayed on as producers for the film version. Collider recently caught up with Kurtzman to get an update on the film, and not only was there a solid confirmation that no one is messing with any comic fans’ dreams, but he appears to be just as excited about the project as anyone else.

Asked how serious he is about the feature, Kurtzman responded bluntly, “We’re going to make a movie! We’re really serious. Absolutely! We’re really, really serious.” That’s all it takes to make me happy. But he had even more exciting news. “In fact, we have locked down on a writer who really came up with a brilliant way to take the best of the first couple graphic novels and play out a complete first movie story with a lot of promise of future movies, which is really our goal,” he continued. “I believe in it so much, and I believe in Joe Hill. All I want is to make that movie.” That whooshing sound you hear is me fist pumping over and over.

Unfortunately, the screenwriter’s identity will remain a mystery for now. Kurtzman’s response when asked about it only serves to solidify his excitement though. “I can’t tell you yet,” he says. “We’re very close, though. Hopefully, it will be out soon. We really loved it, too. But, it will live on as a movie now, and hopefully many.” His ambiguous use of the word “it” doesn’t quite sound like he’s talking about a screenplay, but he could talk about My Little Pony at this point and I’d still be amped up.

Today marks the release of the second-to-last issue ever in the series (probably), and its upcoming ending will definitely feel as jolting as the end of any one of my favorite TV shows over the years. (Take that, Lost!) Luckily, Joe Hill fans have the Alexandre Aja adaptation of Horns to look forward to at some undetermined time.

The comic mostly follows three siblings who live in a house filled with magical keys that each have a different magical power, and their battle against the evil beings that wants to use the keys for their own nefarious means. Part of the joy in reading the comic is in part due to the varying art and storytelling styles that Hill and Rodriguez utilize, and it’ll be interesting to see if any of that comes up in the film.You can't see it in the below trailer for the unaired TV pilot, which looks more like a season from American Horror Story, but it still looks pretty great. Let’s all keep our fingers tightly crossed that Kurtzman doesn’t reveal Orci to be the screenwriter.

Just last week, we shared some new stills from the anticipated feature adaptation of Joe Hill's novel Horns. While the film screened this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, the actual release date has yet to be set, contrary to what has been stated elsewhere. Writer Joe Hill shared a vague update on the status of the movie for those of us who aren't able to be at TIFF to see it. He also unloads heaps of praise on Daniel Radcliffe for his portrayal of the horned lead character Ig Perrish.

First and foremost, according to what Hill posted on his blog, October 12 is not the official post-TIFF release date for the movie. Given the fact that we haven't seen a trailer yet and the movie has yet to acquire U.S. distribution, it's not all that surprising that date previously listed at IMDB (and currently on Wikipedia) turns out to be false, as that's a little more than a month away. Red Granite Pictures' website says 2014, which falls in line with what Hill says about us having to wait "a little while longer."

On a more positive note, Hill had good things to say about the movie, and particularly Radcliffe's portrayal of Ig, stating, that Radcliffe gives a "wrenching, vulnerable, emotionally naked performance that isn’t like anything he’s ever done on screen before. He is such a wonderful Ig Perrish."

Considering the source material, "wrenching," "vulnerable" and "emotionally naked" are good adjectives to use to describe the portrayal of the story's lead character. It's also high praise for Radcliffe's talent as an actor as he continues to take on more adult roles. Horns is one of three films the actor is promoting at TIFF, with Kill your Darlings and The F Word also screening at the festival.

Horns centers on Radcliffe's Ig Perrish, a man who wakes up a year after his girlfriend Merrin was brutally murdered, to discover that he's grown a set of horns. In addition to the drastic physical change these two protuberances cause to his appearance, the horns also give him the ability to draw the deepest, darkest secrets and desires from whomever he's talking to, whether he likes it or not. The book has a little bit of fun with this ability while also applying it toward Ig's determination to figure out what happened to his girlfriend. Juno Temple plays the role of Merrin, Ig's deceased girlfriend. Though she's dead, Merrin actually plays a fairly active role in the book, as there are numerous flashbacks to Ig's past, which help us understand the relationship Ig had with Merrin.

While we continue to wait for a trailer and a release date for the film, we have these new photos to enjoy. And if you haven't already, it sounds like there's still plenty of time to read the book

I was pretty excited when I heard that Mark Romanek would be directing the pilot for Fox's adaptation of Joe Hill's Locke & Key series. Romanek is best known for his work in the music video world creating memorable work like the Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" video, Johnny Cash's "Hurt" and Jay-Z's "99 Problems." He's a pretty adept feature director too with his two films, One Hour Photo and Never Let Me Go, being equally haunting and exquisite. Then the bad news hit, the show was not picked up.

What the (insert curse word)? With all that credibility, Romanek's pedigree on top of the popularity and critical acclaim of Hill's comic-book series not to mention a pretty great cast in Nick Stahl, Miranda Otto, Sarah Bolger, Jesse McCartney, Skylar Gaertner and Ksenia Solo. They held a special screening (well, two actually) of the pilot for the people lucky enough to attend Comic-Con 2011, and even though I was at the convention I wasn't able to catch the show. Definitely one of my regrets of that long and tiring, cosplay-filled weekend. The reactions were... well, quiet, but what I did read was promising.

I'm dying to get a look at this thing myself and, lucky enough, the trailer found its way online yesterday. Josh Friedman, who wrote the pilot (and produced alongside Fringe co-creators Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) tweeted a link to some guy's vimeo account...

No actually, the account is under the name 'some guy' so perhaps this wasn't meant to leak (especially now that it's been disabled... a YouTube embed is there in its place). Either way, it's nice to get to take a look. My first thoughts are, that after a slow start with some questionable music it really got me by second half. Enough so that I would be willing to give it a shot and see what's these keys open up. Unfortunately, it's still not scheduled to hit our televisions in the near future so no shots will be given. Take a look, maybe enough support could rally a network.

The Official Locke & Key synopsis from the IDW website,

The biggest surprise (and disappointment) this pilot season had to be Fox passing on their high-profile comic-book adaptation, Locke & Key. One would think that adaptations, especially of the comic-book variety, would be a sure thing, because they not only come with a built-in audience, but they also know that the particular journey they want to tell has already been successful. That logic didn't stop Fox from bailing on the Locke & Key pilot, BUT it might indicate why the 'dead' show's still been scheduled for Comic-Con.

Comic-Con International is obviously a great place for new series to try and start fan acquisition, but, as Deadline notes, "showcasing pilots that didn't go to series is extremely rare. It will happen this year with Fox's Locke & Key, a suspense thriller based on the graphic novel by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez." IDW Publishing, the people behind the comic, asked Fox permission to hold a "one-time-only screening of the entire pilot [to] show you just what a void there will be on your TVs this fall." Big words. Can the pilot deliver? I don't know, but I want to find out.

Attending the panel, to be held July 22nd at 10:30 a.m., are series executive producers (and frequent geek-property adapters) Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, as well as producer Josh Friedman (who also wrote the pilot). It's a shame that the rest of the talent involved, namely director Mark Romanek and stars Miranda Otto and Nick Stahl, won't be there as well.

Here's the Locke & Key synopsis from the IDW website:

Stephen King adaptations have been a staple of the movie industry since the mid-1970s. Though they've ranged from spectacular - The Shining - to godawful - Sleepwalkers - King's words have long been inspiration for movies. Now his son is getting into the game as well, and his first feature adaptation has landed a star.

Variety reports that Shia LaBeouf is now attached to star in Horns, based on the newest book by Joe Hill. Being scripted by Keith Bunin, LaBeouf will play Ig Perrish, a 20-something who wakes up after being blackout drunk to find that he has sprouted a pair of horns and that his girlfriend has been murdered. Desperate to know why, the horns growing bigger and bigger, he begins to investigate. The book was first picked up back in October of 2009. Hill will also serve as an executive producer on the film.

It sounds like a pretty cool premise, though I, like many others, am still not completely convinced of LaBeouf's talents. But that could all change with the proper director.

When we reported back in February that super-producers Alex Kurztman and Roberto Orci were trying to snag the rights to Joe Hill's graphic novel Locke & Key, we assumed that they were aiming to turn it into a movie, because that's what everyone does with graphic novels these days. But given how badly adaptations of non-tentpole graphic novels have fared at the box office (think Jonah Hex and Scott PIlgrim instead of Batman and Spider-Man), it might be time to start coming up with new ways to bring those graphic novels to life. So how about television instead?

Vulture is reporting that Kurtzman and Orci will be teaming up with none other than Steven Spielberg to turn Locke & Key into a major TV franchise, following the story of three kids living in a New England mansion with doors that transport them to new worlds and given them superpowers. Josh Friedman, an executive producer on The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the writer of Spielberg's War of the Worlds is on board to write and produce the show, with Kurtzman, Orci and SPielberg presumably on board as executive producers-- because, as you may have heard, they've also got a bunch of other stuff on their plate.

Watch the trailer for the comic book below to get a brief taste of what you're in for. Kurtzman and Orci have been basically the only people to successfully cash in on the serialized sci-fi trend that Lost kicked off with Fringe, so this may very well be their chance to do it again.