Filmmaker Mike Flanagan continues his unofficial quest to adapt as many Stephen King novels as possible. This time he has his sights set on a “Dark Tower” series, based on works that King published between 1982 and 2012.
“It’s moving,” Flanagan told Empire Magazine. “We’ve got a lot of scripts done for it. It’s the first priority.” He went on to refer to the series as an “oil tanker.”
The “Dark Tower” series was adapted into a film in 2017, directed and co-written by Nikolaj Arcel. It starred Idris Elba as Roland Deschain, a gunslinger on a quest to protect a mythical structure that supports all realities known as the Dark Tower. The movie wasn’t received well by fans.
The same month the film premiered in 2017, Sony Pictures brought in Glen Mazzara to write and showrun a tv series adaptation of “The Dark Tower.” Elba was even on board. There was a pilot filmed, but in 2020, Amazon ended up passing on it. That pilot will never be publicly released, but you can find the script, and descriptions of the pilot, online.
Then in 2022, Flanagan secured the rights for “The Dark Tower” and confirmed he had a script ready to go. It just seems the wheels of progress are grinding slowly.
“We can’t let that be the final word,” Flanagan said of the film. “We really can’t.”
We’ll keep you posted on updates about “The Dark Tower” series as the project develops.
