I am not a major Oscar caliber Hollywood film guy, so maybe that’s why I just can’t see any way to make Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series actually work in film or on television without doing major, serious, catastrophic alterations to it.
Or maybe the Oscar caliber Hollywood film guys know just what alterations to make. After all, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Akiva Goldsman have stepped up to the plate and decided to adapt the sweeping, multi-volume, canon-crossing series into not just a film and not just a TV series but one of each.
The plan is to make a Dark Tower movie that leads into a TV series, which is unique in terms of being planned that way (plenty of movies have been turned into TV series, but very few big screen movies were intended as pilots (note: some TV series pilots were turned into big screen movies, like Battlestar Galactica, but that’s totally different)). There is no studio attached at the moment, but The Heat Vision Blog says it looks like it’ll be Universal.
Here’s a section of the piece of Heat Vision that intrigues me but also makes me wonder what the grander vision for The Dark Tower is:
The property’s expansive nature and direct connection to King’s other works make it one of the biggest, ripest franchise possibilities in entertainment.
See, that’s why I think it doesn’t quite work as a movie/TV show. The Kingverse can be viewed as semi-cohesive in print, but in film and on TV it’s a mess – and the King adaptations range from major hits to really obscure weird TV miniseries. There’s no way to get the recognition factor into a TV series that was there in print. This isn’t the Marvel Universe on film, where they’re building a continuity all at once. And that’s not even getting into the fact that King himself is a character in the story…
We’ll see. I’m intrigued to see the plans, but I still can’t help but think that the end game for this version of The Dark Tower will be virtually unrecognizable to fans of the books. Which, considering how bad the end game of the books were, could be a good thing.
24 comments
I'm with you, Devin. A lot of that cross-continuity stuff, especially having King as a character, will just look stupid in a film or television version.
Personally, I think the solution would be to approach the Dark Tower movie/TV show as if it were the final iteration of Roland's quest — I don't know if that would allow for the elimination of Stephen King as a character and a "new" version of the story. Not sure if that makes sense.
The more I read Marvels' Dark Tower prequel comics, the more I think they would translate much better to film than the books. The Gunslinger Born, et al could easily be turned into a trilogy, although I'm not sure people would want to sit through three epic LOTR Westerns that ended on a downer. Although I suppose you could have Roland hunt down and kill John Farson to have some sort of uplift amidst all that tragedy. The cliffhanger would be the first scene of the Gunslinger.
I'd love to see this on screen in any form, as long as they tapped into the aesthetics and vibe of the source material. Also, if they rewrote the last four volumes that would be great. Really, Stephen Kiing? After decades of waiting and that's what we get? But it is an awesome universe and I would love to see it realized, if done well.
I've been rereading all the Dark Tower books recently, so this is all pretty coincidental to have sprung up right now. On the one hand, I agree with Devin that the universe itself is too big to adapt for a single film (or a TV series) if you're thinking of bringing King in to play himself, or to deal with the entire detour into romance territory that "Wizard and Glass" was.
But I honestly believe that the guys behind "LOST" could have found a way to make this work as a series. Each book could've been a season, and HBO should be the home for it.
I don't want Ron Howard, Grazer, or Akiva Goldsman anywhere near this thing. It's my all-time favorite series of books, and imagining Howard ripping it to shreds after Goldsman turns in a shite script for it makes me nauseous. Here's a series I've been begging my friends to read for years, and they may finally be introduced to it by way of the dude that made "The DaVinci Code"?
Fuck that with a big concrete dildo.
I'd love King to do a continuation that restarted the whole thing but Roland has the Horn of Gilead (or whatever it's called) at the start and see how that changes things. Hopefully it would take King out of it altogether. I'd LOVE to see what would have happened had he not been owned by that van. I suspect the DT would have been very different.
Worst. News. Ever.
Hm. Ron Howard making a movie based on a King book.. something's off.
Yeah, because Frost/Nixon & Arrested Development were sooooooo bad. Chill out.
I like the idea of a movie & tv show.
And I'm glad it isn't Michael Bay or some music video hack.
It's an interesting idea, but I'll do them one better. Make the #1: The Gunslinger a film, then make #2: Drawing Of The Three a TV season. Then make #3: The Wasteland a film that premieres a few weeks after the TV season for #2 ends. This brings us to Book #4: Wizard and Glass, which is a PREQUEL, so it's a problem solver, a movie or TV-season shaped plug that can fit where ever you need it. Just alternate between movie and TV season, and the last season ends on a cliffhanger in the middle of the last book, finishing the whole thing with Roland's final adventure in the last movie. It sounds like a big commitment for a studio, but it's really only a 3-4 year plan. And sure, it'd all depend on box office/ratings.
Good luck finding an actor that can play Jake and make him stay the same age for as long as this series will take to get to film. Oh, and Dark Tower 7 was the worst ending of all time. Hell, the last 3 books were god awful with the whole "say thankya" bullshit, Mia, and the complete bullshit exit for Randy Flagg.
Can't be done. Simple as that. It makes LORD OF THE RINGS look like MY DINNER WITH ANDRE.
I gave up during the third book, 100 pages of trying to push a wheel chair through the desert was enough. I wouldn't mind a movie, there is a lot that can be chopped away.
The Dark Tower series peaked with The Drawing of the Three. Nothing can touch that book. Its all down hill from there…
But the question remains…will Steve King appear in the movie at some point…playing himself?
Don't like the idea of having a movie lead into a TV series. It's exactly what Lucas did with the Clone Wars cartoon and the movie ended up having a cheap feel to it.
With that said, if they kept the Dark Tower story moving along with sequels and let the fans tie the world together themselves (ie. the creatures in the mist came from the DK universe) instead of spelling it out for them it would work better IMO.
The end of the books kind of lends itself to a new medium telling the story. Just do the first two books (with the horn) just like they were and then they should just do their own thing after that. Three is was where it all started to fall apart.
I didn't like a lot of what was in the last two books, although I certainly found it all interesting (as an insight into King more than as an enjoyable ending to the epic), but if they stick with the whole Ouroboros ending of VII, that would be very cool.
ugghhhhhh. what happened to jj abrams being attached to this? i thought he bought the rights a while back. im pretty sure this is impossible to do, but i think jj had a shot since, based on the early seasons of lost, i feel like he would 'get' kings characters. akiva goldsman… not so much.
in any event, tom jane as roland? i dont really see any other options.
I realize how different books 5-7 were, but the man did write them some 15+ years after Gunslinger/DotT. I loved the open ending of the series. I would find it really interesting, as someone else suggested, if in the film adaptation the first two books are done as they are in the novels, but in book 3 or 4 we realize Roland actually has the horn (of eld I think?) and it changes the end of the story. Have King write it. This way you could get around changing the books for mainstream audiences while keeping the new story as cannon.
Ron Howard? Arghhhhh!!!!
I'm wondering who they will pick to play Roland, but I'm more interested in who will play Eddie Dean, who is by far the most interesting character in the series. Maybe they could clone a younger Robert Downey Jr.
IN OTHER DT RELATED NEWS:
The first issue of "The Gunslinger" comic is releasing soon. They are planning a 30 issue arc for the first book (shortest). If this is any indication, The last book will be 300 issues. Meaning I'll have the last issue sitting next to my Geritol while they change my bed pan for me.
Agreed with #2: it's a "vibe" thing. JJ Abrams and Co had more of a chance to nail it than Howard and Co.
Everything about this scares the shit out of me. Like so many others, The Dark Tower is my favorite series of books and although i've often dreamt of a film/tv version, the idea of it does scare me. These books are dense, maybe too dense for their own good. I would have been happier if it was being done by Damon Lindeof and Carleton Cuse, but they said they couldn't crack the code, so to speak. I have absolutely zero faith in Akiva Goldsmith for this. He did an okay job on DaVinci Code, which was kind of a shit book anyway, but these…these are my own personal Lord of the Rings. I guess I know how everyone felt when it was announced that they were making those into films too. In this, as in everything, casting is key. If they get a great Roland (which is a hell of an IF) and fuck up Eddie, Jake and Odetta/Suzanna then all is lost. I hope these guys have actually, you know, READ the books and are not just looking to see what book series out there hasn't been done yet. I had always thought that King wasn't going to release the rights to this series, because he thought of it as "His Baby". I'm rambling now….like I said, i'm scared shitless about this. When I think of The Dark Tower, the one name that NEVER comes to mind is….Ron Howard.
My only comment.
Viggo Mortenson as Roland….. and hopefully Howard will get sick and they will be forced to find another director and writer..
I haven't read the books but I think it would be a good idea to change whatever they felt they needed to make it work on film. I hate it when fans of books bitch about a movie or t.v. adaptation not being faithful enough to the source material, they are two different mediums and it's just plain stupid to fault one or the other because it's different from the source. The only thing that matters to me is the quality and enjoyability of the product.
Comments are shown as archived from the original site; new comments are closed.