In a slightly unsurprising move (I think it was more surprising that development got this far considering the feature film’s massive failure), Amazon Studios has passed on “The Dark Tower” pilot, Deadline reports.
While it’s not moving forward at Amazon, the production company is shopping the two original scripts that were the basis for the pilot pickup, the site notes.
The adaptation of Stephen King’s book came from executive producer/showrunner Glen Mazzara and MRC.
Deadline also adds that, in the end, Amazon executives felt like the pilot was not on the level of other large-scope elevated genre series the streamer has in production/pre-production like “Wheel Of Time” and “The Lord Of the Rings”.
“The Dark Tower” TV series was designed to be independent from the 2017 film and was meant to be a more faithful retelling of the book than the movie was. It takes place many years before the events depicted in the feature and focused on the origin story of Roland Deschain’s (Sam Strike) – how he first became a gunslinger and got his guns, his first conflict with the man in black (Jasper Pääkkönen), his first love and his first mission as a gunslinger.
The cast of the pilot, which was never officially announced or confirmed, also is believed to have included Michael Rooker, Jerome Flynn and Joana Ribeiro.
King’s eight Dark Tower books draw from multiple genres, including dark fantasy, science fantasy, horror and Western.
