Stephen King’s iconic novel series The Dark Tower heads to the small screen with a new TV adaptation

Five years after Sony Pictures’ disappointing film adaptation, Stephen King’s iconic novel series The Dark Tower is heading to the small screen.

Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) is creating and executive producing a new television adaptation of The Dark Tower through Intrepid Pictures which he is directing with Trevor Macy, according to Term.

The news comes just days after Flanagan and Macy’s Intrepid Pictures signed a new blanket deal with Amazon Studios (after four years at Netflix), though it’s unclear if Amazon will be on board or not.

Flanagan revealed that both he and Macy had acquired the rights to The Dark Tower from author King himself, after sending him a “detailed sketch” of how he envisions the series.

Its acquisition of the rights to The Dark Tower predates its new deal with Amazon, which was announced last week.

“We actually have those rights carved into our agreement with Amazon, which doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t support it at some point, you don’t know. But that’s something we’ve been developing ourselves and we’re really passionate about finally getting it on our feet at some point,” Flanagan said.

He added that he has written a pilot script for the series, which he expects to run for at least five seasons, followed by two standalone movies.

‘Well, to be honest, the way I’ve seen it break out is five seasons of TV, followed by two standalone features. But I think our priority has been to try to get the television side up and running first,” Flanagan said.

“We’re not going to put the cart too far ahead of the horse on such a challenging project, but I think it’s the perfect way to do it,” he added.

Flanagan and Macy’s approach is essentially the opposite of the ambitious approach that Universal and director Ron Howard had taken more than a decade earlier.

In 2010, Universal Pictures announced plans for a trilogy of films based on The Dark Tower books, with two television seasons airing between the films to bridge the gaps in the story.

Ron Howard was attached to direct the entire film trilogy from scripts by Akiva Goldsman, with Howard and his former Imagine partner Brian Grazer serving as producers.

Though just a year later, in 2011, Universal turned down the project entirely due to budget concerns, with Warner Bros. expressing interest at one point before approving, before Sony Pictures partnered with Media Rights Capital to make a feature film adaptation in 2015.

That film, released in 2017, starred Idris Elba as Roland Deschain aka The Gunslinger and Matthew McConaughey as Walter O’Dim aka The Man in Black.

Despite the fervent fanbase of King’s seven novels, the film was a commercial disappointment, earning $50.7 million domestically and $113.2 million worldwide, with many fans and critics panning the film. for mitigating the violence for a PG-13 rating.

There was already a TV series in development, even after the flop of The Dark Tower movie, with Glenn Mazzara (The Shield, The Walking Dead) serving as showrunner.

Amazon picked up the rights in 2018, with Sam Strike and Jasper Paakkonen as Roland and Walter respectively, though it never went into production.

Amazon confirmed in January 2020 that they would not be moving forward with the series, although financier MRC was still trying to buy the pilot script elsewhere.

As for the new series, Flanagan revealed that Amazon is “very aware of it,” though it’s not yet clear if they’ll be on board.

We are just at the beginning of this new relationship. We were careful to keep it separate just in case, we would be quite understanding of any institutional PTSD from the other attempts they made to fit it there,” Flanagan said.

‘So we wanted to keep that separate. But they are absolutely aware of it, and if that is something they would be interested in, we would be delighted,” she added.

King began writing The Dark Tower when he was just 22 years old, referring to the series as his ‘magnum opus’.

The books follow Roland Deschain, the last of a line of gunslingers, who embarks on an epic quest to find The Dark Tower before the sorcerer Walter O’Dim can and use it to rule endless kingdoms.

The seven-book series has been considered one of the most difficult works of literature to adapt, though Flanagan has had quite a bit of practice, directing two of King’s books that many thought were among the most difficult to adapt: ​​Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. . .

“I think we’ve had good, incremental practice getting there because people were saying Gerald’s Game was unfilmable; that was discouraging,’ Flanagan said.

‘When Doctor Sleep came out, people were like, “Oh my gosh, of all the projects to undertake, why would you go into the spotlight there?” So I feel like we’ve been gently preparing for this along the way, but yeah, none of it escapes me,” he added.