TV
Mike Flanagan Gives Promising Update on ‘The Dark Tower’ Series Adaptation
“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.
AMC’s horror series “The Terror” wrapped its third season last month, but plans are already in motion for season four.
Executive producer David W. Zucker has confirmed that “The Terror” Season 4 is moving forward in a new chat with ScreenRant, revealing that they’ve “just closed the deal on the book we’re gonna develop next” for the series.
Which novel they’re adapting remains shrouded in secrecy at this stage, however.
That might not seem like much to go on at this stage, but the second season was an original story. Furthermore, there was a lengthy gap between seasons two and three, causing many to speculate that the third season would be the anthology series’ last. Unlike its first two, Season 3 shifted from airing on AMC to a dual Shudder and AMC+ weekly release plan, with neither streamer revealing viewership numbers.
So not only is this confirmation that the series is moving forward, but it won’t be another six years before we see Season 4.
The first season of the supernatural drama, based on Dan Simmons’ novel and aired in 2018, was set on the frigid decks of a Victorian Era sailing ship following a doomed course, while season two, “The Terror: Infamy,” which premiered in August 2019, centered on a malevolent, shape-shifting force that is locked up with prisoners in a Japanese internment camp.
Season 3, “The Terror: Devil in Silver,” tells the story of Pepper – a working class moving man, who through a combination of bad luck and a bad temper, finds himself wrongfully committed to New Hyde Psychiatric Hospital – an institution filled with the people society would rather forget. There, he must contend with patients who work against him, doctors who harbor grim secrets, and perhaps even the very Devil himself.
Dan Stevens (The Guest, Abigail) stars alongside Judith Light, CCH Pounder, Aasif Mandvi, John Benjamin Hickey, Stephen Root, Michael Aronov, Marin Ireland, Chinaza Uche, Hampton Fluker, Hayward Leach, and Philip Ettinger.
The six-episode new season is based on Victor LaValle’s novel, The Devil in Silver.