Remember when Amazon purchased a very substantial set of literary IP to develop into series and such? We remember, and we remember that one title in particular had our interest- Stephen King‘s “The Dark Tower.”
If you’ll recall back in 2016, HBO was reportedly working on a series based on the books, that wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with the Sony 2017 feature film starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. That project got scrapped.
In February of 2018, Amazon picked up the rights for The Dark Tower, Wheel of Time, Ringworld, Lazarus, Snow Crash, and a little thing called “Lord of the Rings.” Word came down that same week that Glen Mazzara was going to be heading Dark Tower, and our interest was immediately peeked.
Amazon ordered a pilot for “The Dark Tower.” Sam Strike (“Nightflyers,” “Mindhunter“) was cast as the Gunslinger, Roland Deschain. Jasper Pääkkönen (“Vikings,” “BlacKkKlansman“) was Marten Broadcloak, Michael Rooker (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) as Eldred Jonas, and Jerome Flynn (“Game of Thrones“) as Steven Deschain. Stephen Hopkins (“Lost in Space” 1998) was brought on to direct, and Emmy-winning composer Bear McCreary was handling the score.
The pilot got filmed, but unfortunately earlier this year, Amazon passed on picking it up to series. Even Stephen King himself offered his sympathy to Mazzara.
Cut to just this week and our friends over at The Kingcast, Scott Wampler and Eric Vespe, got to watch the pilot AND speak with Marazza about the series that almost was. We will warn you that the episode does include giant spoilers for The Dark Tower if you haven’t read the books, so, proceed at your own risk.
SUPER SPOILERS FOR “THE DARK TOWER”
You can listen to episode 3 of The Kingcast for the entire thing:
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