Award-winning IDW comic Locke & Key came thiiiissss close to a TV adaptation, going so far as to shoot a FOX pilot that screened at Comic-Con 2011, before the project ended up shelved. Now, IDW will attempt to adapt the series once again, setting author and creator Joe Hill to write a new pilot and serve as executive producer.

For those unfamiliar, Locke & Key, by Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez, follows three siblings of the Locke family, who move into their ancestral Massachusetts mansion “Keyhouse” after the brutal murder of their father, discovering many a bizarre key and series of doors, along with a supernatural presence to the home. Following the failed FOX attempt, Universal also optioned the comic for film with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, until the rights lapsed.

IDW is aiming for a straight-to-series order, in which they’d maintain the worldwide rights, while Hill had this to say of the re-do:

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

In addition to Hill, IDW’s Ted Adams and David Ozer will serve as executive producers, alongside The Walking Dead helmers David Alpert and Rick Jacobs of Circle of Confusion. Will the second Locke & Key fare better than the first?