Director Mike Flanagan has discussed his plans for a potential series adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, and how the 2017 film version may have impacted his chances of making the series. Flanagan, known for his successful horror series on Netflix such as The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight Club, has recently started working with Amazon Studios on new television projects. He hopes to create a longer-form adaptation of King’s multi-volume work, The Dark Tower, which began with the first volume, The Gunslinger, in 1982.
The 2017 film version, which starred Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, was not well-received and may have cooled Hollywood’s interest in King-based stories. Flanagan believes that the film’s failure may have hurt his chances of making a Dark Tower streaming series. “That was the wrong approach to the material, kind’ve across the board, and it was such the wrong approach that I think it kind’ve salted the earth for anyone else who wanted to plant something under the Dark Tower banner for who knows how long,” he explained.
Flanagan acquired the rights to adapt King’s The Dark Tower last year, but momentum on getting the series into production at Amazon has slowed. He referred to a previous Amazon adaptation that created a single pilot episode in 2020 but was canceled before getting off the ground. Though its life was short, developing The Dark Tower series and shooting a single episode had cost Amazon significant time and money. “That’s my studio now for television, and I can understand going to them and saying ‘Hey, would you like to walk exactly down the same title that you spent all this money on, that you still feel bruised from.’ I understand the issues,” he said.
2023-03-24 01:00:04
Original from gamerant.com