From Gerald’s Game to Doctor Sleep to The Life of Chuck to the upcoming Prime Video series Carrie, filmmaker Mike Flanagan has cemented himself as a seminal figure when it comes to adapting the works of Stephen King, rivaling the tenure of Mick Garris. It only made sense, then, that Flanagan confirmed in 2022 that he had acquired the rights to The Dark Tower series, which is arguably considered King’s opus. Four years later, though, there have been no substantial updates on the project. And with Flanagan only getting busier, we’ve been left to wonder when, or if, his plans would ever come to fruition.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan has offered a new update that confirms the project is still “very much on the table,” while he also explained the various hurdles the project must overcome. He explained, “To do it the way I wanna do it requires an enormous commitment from a studio.”
With the narrative itself sprawling multiple novels, and with the story blending together fantasy, supernatural, and Western genres, it’s an ambitious effort from a filmmaking scope alone. Additionally, the stories weave in and out of various other stories from King’s vast library, which results in more complications, given the number of studios that possess the rights to various titles.
“The way the Dark Tower universe is connected, you’ve got characters in there that are all over the place when it comes to studio ownership,” Flanagan detailed. “So the development process on it has been epic. It, of course, has taken much longer than I’d like it to, but I work on it all the time. It’s never stopped moving. It just moves at its own oil-tanker pace.”
In this sense, the complications sound reminiscent of what the Marvel Cinematic Universe has gone through over the years, with rights issues preventing integral characters from appearing across titles and behind-the-scenes deals needing to be struck. However, King’s sprawling library and his penchant for offering up the rights to his stories make it an even more complicated situation.
Unfortunately, these complications fall entirely in line with the long and frustrating history of The Dark Tower.
In 2017, Nikolaj Arcel directed The Dark Tower movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, which was meant to serve as both an adaptation and a sequel to the original books. With a 95-minute runtime, the movie fell flat with audiences and critics, as it failed to capture the scope of the source material. Amazon then bought the rights to the series and even filmed a pilot for a TV series, though the streamer opted to scrap the pilot and not pick it up to series.
Knowing that we still have quite a wait ahead of us for the adaptation to move forward is disappointing, but all Stephen King fans can agree that we’d rather wait for a worthy adaptation than see another rushed attempt be released.
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