“A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.” Like Stephen King’s beloved The Dark Tower novel series, the road to its series adaptation is long and winding.

Luckily, its showrunner recently provided ComicBook with a hopeful update.

With The Life of Chuck releasing this week, a new Exorcist movie on the way, and casting announced on his upcoming “Carrie” series, it’s safe to say that filmmaker and showrunner Mike Flanagan is keeping very busy.

Where does “The Dark Tower,” initially announced over two years ago, fit into his slate?

“It’s not that I’ve put it down. It’s just that the thing is so big, it’s like building an oil tanker,” Flanagan told ComicBook in a chat. “We’ve been moving it forward this whole time. It’s just, that’s how big it is. It’s constantly in the works, and you better believe as often as you guys may want to ask about it, Stephen King is asking me about it more, and I’m not gonna let him down.”

The Dark Tower is indeed a sprawling novel series. King began writing the first novel in the epic Dark Tower saga, The Gunslinger, in 1970, which was then published in 1982. The Gunslinger then led to seven more novels, a novella, and a children’s book. It follows Roland Deschain, Mid-World’s last gunslinger, as he travels across Mid-World’s post-apocalyptic landscape in search of the Dark Tower.

The filmmaker revealed in 2022 that his Intrepid Pictures acquired the rights to The Dark Tower, which has been in development since. The filmmaker views it as “a series that’s going at least five seasons” with the potential to spawn feature films.

While it’s a small update, it’s a promising one. Flanagan understands the epic, complex scale of what many consider to be King’s magnum opus and is taking it one step at a time.

Stay tuned.