It seems like over the last decade or so, you can’t talk about Mike Flanagan without talking about Stephen King. Flanagan does not only do adaptations of King’s work. We promise. It just happens to be that his last three feature films and his upcoming Amazon Prime series were and are adaptations of Stephen King’s books. For those keeping track at home, we had Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Life of Chuck, with the upcoming project being Carrie. But another project has been circling Flanagan’s workspace tied to King. It’s a big one too: The Dark Tower. It’s the centerpiece of King’s bibliography, especially to his die-hard fans. Flanagan recently spoke about how the upcoming series is developing and the troubles behind the scenes.
The Dark Tower Universe is Expansive
Even without Flanagan having to say anything, if someone’s familiar with The Dark Tower, they can already tell you a big problem with trying to get this done. The universe that comprises The Dark Tower is expansive. We’re talking about eight full novels, a novella, a line of comic books, and a feature film that was part adaptation, part sequel. Trying to distill that all into a film was partly what doomed the aforementioned movie from 2017. It would have to be a series, and it would need to be intensely epic in scope. Flanagan knows that, and it’s one of the problems with getting it made.
As Flanagan stated, “To do it the way I wanna do it requires an enormous commitment from a studio.” That studio has already changed too. Flanagan was trying to work on this project with Netflix. Then he ended up in a contract working exclusively for Amazon. They picked up the rights for The Dark Tower along with the writer/director. We suppose the good news about that is if any company has the money to throw at a massive project like this, it would be Amazon.
Characters and Rights Issues
There’s another, bigger issue though. Flangan continues. “The way The Dark Tower universe is connected, you’ve got characters in there that are all over the place when it comes to studio ownership.” Again, if you know The Dark Tower, then you also know how it’s connected to so many other elements of King’s work. We’re not going to give away spoilers, so we’ll be vague. Characters from Salem’s Lot show up in The Dark Tower series. That book was recently made into a film by Paramount who may still have the rights to that. Meanwhile, characters from It also show up, and Warner Bros. has that book locked up. So yeah, it’s complicated.
Flanagan does express, though, that the series is still in the works. He hasn’t given up on it. This should come as some comfort to fans of King’s work who have been wanting this project to happen for decades now. Flanagan has proven he knows how to adapt King’s works. This undertaking, however, would be something so much more massive in scope than any King adaptation before this. Maybe we’ll have to see how Carrie performs when it releases in October. If it does well, it may help propel Amazon to make The Dark Tower a bit more of a reality.
