Stephen King is a name that commands respect and sometimes derision. Virtually everyone knows of his works but depending on what works someone has been exposed to will heavily shape their opinion of him. If people only know him from shoddy ’90s TV mini-series and things like “Dreamcatcher,” then they probably aren’t going to have a good time. But die-hard aficionados of King know the depth of the man’s work, with the crown jewel of it being “The Dark Tower” series. That’s the series that pulls it all together and more. And we don’t know if King is just messing with us or not, but he might be teasing something new for that universe.
If you immediately associate King with horror, that makes sense; King is a masterful writer of the genre even though he’s invested a lot of time into other subjects. Dark fantasy is one of those genres he’s also written in with the aforementioned “Dark Tower” being something that has spanned a number of novels, short stories, comics, and a feature-film that was not well received. But the series supposedly had wrapped in 2004 with the final chapter. We did get an integral chapter in 2012 but that was just filling things in between chapters 4 and 5. So what do we make of this?
WHAT ARE YOU WRITING STEPHEN!? What do you mean you’re “back in Mid-World?” You’re just wandering back into the main world of “The Dark Tower” and you “don’t know if it will develop into anything?” WHY ELSE ARE YOU THERE!? And what’s with the shirt?! Yes, we know that all things serve the beam, we were told this about the structure of the multi-verse you’ve woven together! It’s your equivalent of “He who controls the spice controls the universe!” This is the kind of thing that makes people ask a LOT of questions! King’s world building when it comes to his fantasy material is pretty extensive. The man has a lot of love and respect for J.R. R. Tolkien and he is not afraid to show his influences. That is to say that he could do a lot more with this universe, especially when you know that nearly all of King’s works tie into a shared universe.
Obviously what we REALLY want is Mike Flanagan‘s “Dark Tower” tv series.
“That thing’s launching an oil tanker. But we’re working on,” Flanagan said back in September of 2024. “It was stalled first by me moving from Netflix to Amazon and stalled again by the strikes. It’s progressing, and we’re further along than we’ve ever been on it. I do see feature components to some of the other stories, but the main storyline is ongoing series.”
For King fans, this is not news to take lightly. While many authors and artists will announce or tease projects that never come to fruition, keep in mind that King’s output is ferociously steady. The man pumps out novels or collections of short stories on a yearly basis, so the odds are that if he’s planning on writing something, it will move into the actual writing phase and get published. At least it’s far more likely with him than it would be with J. D. Salinger when he was alive or George R. R. Martin today.
We’ll let you know what we hear about this and other news.
