The adaptation of Stephen King‘s The Dark Tower wasn’t just to begin a new film franchise but was also supposed to spread across other platforms, including television. After bombing in its theatrical run ($110M worldwide gross on a $60M budget), reports still indicated that the producers would continue to move forward on a series. In fact, just two months ago it was announced that Glen Mazzara, who ran “The Walking Dead” between 2011 and 2013, has come aboard “The Dark Tower” as showrunner. Even with this news we were convinced that the franchise is all but dead. In a new interview with King, he reveals that they’ll need to do a complete reboot, while also offering his reasoning for the film’s failures.

“The major challenge was to do a film based on a series of books that’s really long, about 3,000 pages,” King told Vulture. “The other part of it was the decision to do a PG-13 feature adaptation of books that are extremely violent and deal with violent behavior in a fairly graphic way. That was something that had to be overcome, although I’ve gotta say, I thought [screenwriter] Akiva Goldsman did a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie.

“The TV series they’re developing now … we’ll see what happens with that,” he added. “It would be like a complete reboot, so we’ll just have to see.”

The movie was ill-advised from the start being that it spanned over 8 books and 3,000 pages. A television series, on the other hand, would make a whole lot of sense and allow for world and character building over several seasons. It appears by doing things ass-backward they may have shot themselves in the foot and killed this franchise dead before it even had a chance to breathe.

The series, in development through Media Rights Capital and Sony Pictures Television, is currently in its early stages. A network is not yet attached and is being eyed for a short-order (between 10 and 13 episodes) and a home on cable or streaming outlets.