Is Netflix’s Lockwood & Co. based on a book?

Netflix’s new series Lockwood & Co. is certainly an exciting tale – but where did the story come from, and is it based on a book?

While Halloween may long be over, some people’s love for shows about ghosts never wavers. So, when it was announced that a new series about ghost hunters, titled Lockwood & Co., was coming to Netflix, naturally people got very excited.

The official Netflix synopsis is as thus: “In a world plagued by ghosts, three teens band together as paranormal investigators, risking what little they have to unravel a diabolical conspiracy.”

We enjoyed the series here at Dexerto, and you can read our review here. Some may be wanting to digest more Lockwood & Co. content once they’ve binged the show, but where was the series drawn from? Ghost shows often come from ghost stories, but is that the case here? Let us explain…

Is Lockwood & Co. based on a book?

Yes, Lockwood & Co. is based on a series of books of the same name by Johnathan Stroud.

The books – which came out between 2013 and 2017 – are a young adult supernatural thriller series, which follows pretty much the same plot as the show. The series was actually born from a short story that Stroud wrote for The Guardian‘s website, titled “The Dagger in the Desk.” The tale was contributed to by readers, helping build the franchise’s locations and ghosts.

The are five books in total, which are:

• The Screaming Staircase
• The Whispering Skull
• The Hollow Boy
• The Creeping Shadow
• The Empty Grave

So far the series has covered the first two books, meaning that there are three left to adapt.

And according to an interview with show creator Joe Cornish, these three books give potential plot to future seasons. As he stated to Dexerto, “We’d continue with the books. Yeah, we’d love to do more, the books get better and better, the characters get more and more interesting, the situations get more complex and exciting. So there would be nothing we’d like more than to do more.”

How closely did the Netflix show stick to the books?

Obviously, adaptation is an art in and of itself and can lead to extra scrutiny from audiences, since there’s something to compare the show to. So when it came to how the books were adapted, this is what the cast and director had to say.

“I think actually the scripts find themselves to be very true to the books,” Ali Hadji-Heshmati, who plays George Karim, said.

“So, that adaptation process as an actor, for me I didn’t find too hard, I felt that the scripts did the work for me there.”

“Definitely,” Cameron Chapman, who plays Lockwood himself, added. “But we were given so much support in terms of glossaries for referencing and the terminology and the language that’s used.”

To hear more from the actors, check out the interview below:

Lockwood & Co. is currently available to stream on Netflix. Check out the rest of our coverage of the show here.