Mike Flanagan to Adapt Stephen King’s Epic ‘The Dark Tower’ for Amazon
Stephen King’s epic Dark Tower is getting another chance. This new adaptation is bound for the small screen with Mike Flanagan at the helm.
The Dark Tower is the epic story of frontiersman knight Roland Deschain’s journey to save his decaying home, Mid-World. His quest leads him on a trek to a fabled tower that stands at the nexus of time and space – but he’s not the only one searching for it and its power. The novels incorporate themes across multiple genres and pull in characters and elements from King’s decades of work. The Dark Tower is considered to be the prolific author’s magnum opus.
There have been a couple of attempts to adapt The Dark Tower to the screen recently. The 2017 movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey was horrible and flopped. Amazon followed that with a pilot for a series that didn’t go anywhere. It’s not an easy or inexpensive property to adapt. It needs the right person and the right deep pockets – they may have finally run into each other.
Mike Flanagan’s The Dark Tower Series
It’s not a secret that Mike Flanagan is a King fan. He’s adapted two of the author’s books – Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep – and has repeatedly spoken about his desire to do a long-form Dark Tower series. It’s something he’s been working on between other projects, as he explained to Deadline…
“Predating our deal with Amazon, we acquired the rights to The Dark Tower, which if you know anything about me, you know it has been my Holy Grail of a project for most of my life. We actually have those rights carved out of our Amazon deal, which doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t get behind it at some point — you don’t know. But that’s something we’ve been developing ourselves and are really passionate about finally getting it up on its feet at some point.”
When?! Where?!
Flanagan was asked how far he is into the development of Dark Tower; his answer was decades…
“… more than half of my life, I’ve closed my eyes and been able to watch a lot of this play out. I’ve dreamed about this. That first shot which comes right off at the first incredible sentence of the first book, The Gunslinger, I’ve had that image just rattling around in my head since I was an undergrad… The pilot script is one of my favorite things I’ve ever gotten to work on. It’s been surreal working on that. So we’ve been floored and grateful that Stephen King trusts us with such an undertaking, something so precious to him. We hope to find the right partners to realize it.”
I do, too. He’s the right person to adapt the books – he’s excellent at long-form stories and loves the source material. Flanagan also has the stamp of approval from King.
“This happened because I sent him a very, very detailed outline of what I wanted to do with it. And it was in response to that, that he gave us the rights. A project like this, I wouldn’t want to be involved in it at all If we were taking it in a direction that was going to be blasphemous to the Stephen King material, but he’s been very, very supportive and very excited about what we’d like to do with it.”
This is still in the early-ish stages, so there are no dates or cast. Flanagan’s Intrepid Pictures recently moved from Netflix to Amazon, so you’ll need a Prime membership to watch this if/when it does come out.
