With Tinseltown buzzing about AMC’s adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comics, the Fox television network has made a series commitment for an adaptation of Joe Hill’s horror comic book Locke & Key, which is published by IDW.  Originally set up as a possible movie, Dreamworks has recently positioned Locke & Key as a TV series (see “Locke & Key on TV”), and according to The Hollywood Reporter ABC is eyeing the property for a summer series.  Star Trek producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who were originally responsible for acquiring the Locke & Key property, are on board as executive producers along with IDW’s Ted Adams.  Joe Hill is the son of bestselling novelist Stephen King.

In some ways a TV series is a better fit for a comic book series, given that a successful series can accumulate hundreds of hours of screen time, which allow it to fully dramatize a complex serial narrative such as a comic property without having to compress the story into a 2-3 hour feature film format.  And, as a general rule, TV series have a much longer shelf life than feature films.