Written By: Sophie Archambault
Somehow, it escaped my notice until last week that one of my favorite YA series, Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co., is bound for a Netflix series adaptation. If you read my last blog post, you’ll know that I get nervous when a book close to my heart gets a moment on the big screen. However, I’ve long thought that Lockwood & Co. would make a great movie or tv show, so I’m willing to suspend judgment until I see the final result. Here’s everything I know about the Netflix show so far.
Apparently, casting for the show was announced in March, though I clearly missed the memo. It was only after falling down the Bridgerton rabbit hole that I discovered Ruby Stokes (aka Francesca Bridgerton) will be playing Lucy Carlyle. She is joined by Cameron Chapman as Anthony Lockwood and Ali Hadji-Heshmati as George. All three are relative unknowns. Despite being part of the popular Bridgerton franchise, Ruby Stokes only appeared in three episodes of season one and had to pull out of season two because of filming conflicts with Lockwood. Ali Hadji-Heshmati has appeared in the Amazon Prime series Alex Rider (also a book adaptation) while Cameron Chapman will make his television debut in Lockwood. Casting for the other major roles was also announced in March.
The show began filming in July 2021 and wrapped just last month. It’s currently in post-production and is set to be released sometime later this year. There will be eight hour-long episodes in the first season. Though it hasn’t been confirmed whether the season will try to incorporate multiple books, my guess is that it will mainly focus on the events of the first book in the series, The Screaming Staircase.
As of now, the only change I’m aware of is that the character of George Cubbins has been changed to George Karim, likely to reflect the actor’s background. I’m excited to see what Netflix does with this adaptation! Until it’s released, I’ll be crossing my fingers hoping it does the books justice.