Ruby Stokes, Cameron Chapman, and Ali Hadji-Heshmati play young paranormal investigators in Lockwood & Co. Director Joe Cornish, known for his work on Adam and Joe, spoke about his enthusiasm about adapting Jonathan Stroud’s books for the big screen.
Many may remember Joe Cornish as one of the hosts of the cult television series The Adam And Joe Show. Which featured the two friends making movies out of toys, committing pranks, and having Adam’s father critique music videos.
Cornish has since established himself as a writer and filmmaker, having worked on Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, Marvel’s Antman, and his directorial debut Attack The Block, which starred John Boyega in his breakthrough role, and most recently The Kid Who Would Be King.
Now, he has returned to television with a Netflix adaptation of the supernatural young adult book series Lockwood & Co. And while it may appear to some that Cornish is slacking off between projects, he assures he is not.
The gap between Attack The Block (2011) and The Kid Who Would Be King (2019) is far wider than the three years between the latter and his present show.
“”Give me a break—getting the money to write, film, and edit these things takes a long,” he jokes. “I’m moving as quickly as possible!”
Three juvenile paranormal investigators are featured in Lockwood & Co, which is set in a version of London where an invasion of ghosts is causing widespread unhappiness, and children are enlisted to combat them.
It’s not the first time Cornish has collaborated with a young cast.
“I adore it, I adore the vitality that younger actors offer,” he declares. “I enjoy the excitement of going to work every day – this part of the process is great, the process of the cast and crew screening, the premieres, it’s so exciting and gives everything this youthful energy, I guess.
“And I’m less afraid of directing them than I am of directing very experienced actors because remember: actors make three films a year, while directors, if they’re lucky, only make one film every three years, so it makes me feel like the wise old man, which I suppose I am – old, but not necessarily wise.”
Cornish has been interested in Lockwood & Co for some time; he read the first of Jonathan Stroud’s books a decade ago and described it as “very wonderful and unusual in these core ideas it has,” but after a bidding war another studio won the rights and Cornish’s career went elsewhere.
A decade later, the rights became available once more – and with several additional books in the series. And following a phone call to Stroud, Cornish set the wheels in motion for the development of the program.
He adds of the stories, “They’re totally in my wheelhouse. They contain all the things I love, and they’re centered on these brilliantly creative concepts.” The first is that spirits can kill by touching their victims.
Old-fashioned supernatural belief
He continues: “The second is an old-fashioned supernatural belief that young people are more sensitive to ghosts and the supernatural than older people; the third is that agencies employ young people to fight ghosts; and the fourth is that ghosts can be repelled with iron and salts and other old-fashioned analog techniques.
“Thus, I had never seen a ghost story with these new criteria that turned it into an action-adventure story. Also, Lockwood’s principal characters, Lucy and George, are so compelling.”
Even while this was a new perspective on the supernatural for Cornish. It was certainly not his first, and he’ll be hoping it’s received better than his first.
“When I was 13 I attempted to make a Super8 video at school,” he says. “It was named Yesyes because, according to one idea, that’s why an Ouija board is known as an Ouija board.” Oui (French) and Ja (German) both mean yes.
“I felt the title was quite smart! But we never completed it since nobody cared as much about it as I did. They were all bored.”
