The writer and director worked closely with the author of the books.
Netflix is taking us ghost hunting with new fantasy series Lockwood & Co and fans of the hit books will be eager to see how the show shapes up.
Based on the novels by Jonathan Stroud and starring Bridgerton’s Ruby Stokes (Lucy Carlyle) alongside Cameron Chapman (Anthony Lockwood) and Ali Hadji-Heshmati (George Karim), Lockwood & Co follows three teens running a start-up ghost hunting agency in a London that’s plagued by large-scale hauntings.
Writer and director Joe Cornish was eager to keep the series as faithful to the books as possible, but admitted there were some changes that had to be made, including a huge fight scene that didn’t make the cut.
He told RadioTimes.com: “There is a big sequence at the beginning of book two, where George and Lockwood go off and fight spectres on a common and they get beaten by Kipps’ crew.
“It was just a massive set piece that didn’t actually advance the story and we didn’t have the time or money for it. Having said that, we’ve had the time and money for absolutely every other set piece in the books. But that one we didn’t get to do.
“Instead the characters come in and talk about it. It would be lovely for it to have been a 20-episode series with £20 million per episode, then we could have done all that stuff!”
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Cornish and Stroud also worked together on important character changes.
The writer and director explained at a Q&A: “[Casting] George was really difficult, a really particular character.
“He’s very clever but slightly socially dysfunctional, incredibly loyal to Lockwood and gets very jealous with Lucy as the series proceeds. And again, Ali just walked in and had exactly the right chemistry for the character.
“He happens to be British-Iranian, who the character in the book isn’t but we thought, well, that’s a really great chance to enhance the character with all these different elements that come in later in the series. So we just got really lucky to find three really, really lovely, brilliant, hard-working young actors.
“The surname [Karim] we worked out with Jonathan and Ali. We worked it out together, because he’s called George Cubbins in the books. But Ali, the actor, and Jonathan Stroud, the author of the books, got together and gave him a new surname.”
The series, which is based on the first two books of Stroud’s series, follows Lockwood, the mysterious owner of the agency, Lucy, a psychically talented teen, and George, the pair’s genius pal, as they embark on an investigation that could cost all of them their lives.
Lockwood & Co is available to stream on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £6.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.
The Lockwood & Co books are available in a collection now.
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