Universal Pictures and NBC Universal Television Entertainment have announced that they’ve acquired the rights to produce three films and a television series based on Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.
His quite-decent seven part series had a rocky start and a disappointing ending but remained one of those dream projects for filmmakers, one that seems quite hard to adapt in any faithful way due to the sheer size of it (them books are BIG) as well as the numerous themes and genres it incorporates. But then again, they said the same about The Lord of the Rings…
As previously rumored, Ron Howard will direct the first film and do the first season of the tv series as well, which will be written by Akiva Goldsman (yikes).
“I’ve been waiting for the right team to bring the characters and stories in these books to film and TV viewers around the world,” said King. “Ron, Akiva, Brian along with Universal and NBC have a deep interest and passion for the ‘The Dark Tower’ series and I know that will translate into an intriguing series of films and TV shows that respect the origins and the characters in ‘The Dark Tower’ that fans have come to love.”
The tv series will likely also draw from King’s comic book prequel as well as the numerous short stories he’s written about the series. More as we hear it!
16 comments
Howard and Goldsman = Pure Bland. Damnit.
Not good news.
Akiva Goldsmith rapes the souls of dead babies before they go to heaven. And he sucks as a writer too.
Akiva Goldsman? Mother… I still wish the LOST guys would've stuck with it. The whole thing seems right in their wheelhouse.
Yeah, it totally goes with the LOST guys: a series that starts off intriguing but crash and burns by the end of it all. I don't mind this team taking it on; it might be "bland", as some say, but at least it'll be solid instead of what most King projects get (majority bad with good bits sprinkled in).
Fuck you, #5. LOST is better than 90% of everything else you've ever laid eyes on.
The Dark Tower – intriguing (if somewhat rough start) with the first book, although the sequence where Roalnd is attacked by the townspeople and guns them all down could make for an amazing film sequence. The next two are quite interesting and the visuals of the wastelands in particular could make for some very interesting films. Wizards and Glass as a flashback, especially the attack sequence at the end – with the whole boys becoming real gunslingers could be great – the series after that goes completely off the rails (I don't think King ever recovered from the van crash – fear of his own mortality made him rush the ending and produce a bad ending to the series (Wolves of the Calla might as well not exist).
I think much like her character, the whole Detta/Odetta/Susanah characterization could be really grating on people, and there's so much material I'm not sure how you sequence it into a series of films, but some of the early stuff akin tot he man with no name going across the bleak landscape could be pretty fantastic.
Cool, I've always been intrigued by the books, but Stephen King's prose, are um, not very good, so I never bothered. I'm grading on curve becuase I love crappy fantasy books. Howard did bring us Arrested Development, and I'll get mocked for this, and Willow so he aint all bad.
Always loved Willow. Fuck the haters!
Hahaha @ butthurt #6.
Ah, one of my favorite series of book brought to the screen by the hackiest of hacks to even work in Hollywood Hack-town.
Not a fan of Goldman, but he's done some good TV work on Fringe.
who do you think is the best actor to play Roland? I think it can only be Viggo, but if its going to tv it will prolly be jost hartnet or some other sub par actor.
They should get the crew that adapted Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man to do this. I think it'd be great.
Also, gangs of fanboys should get together and petition and demonstrate to ban Akiva Goldsman from future screenwriting projects. Just because it would make interesting news.
So, not that I believe it was going to happen or anything, but I suppose this means Howard won't be directing the Arrested Development movie next year?
I've dreamed about this since I read the first book, with Jason Patric as the gunslinger, but he might be too old for this role now. I even had Odetta Holmes picked out but forgot who I had in mind as it was so long ago. Maybe Khandi Alexander, and although I would welcome her, it might have been someone else who I first had in mind for that part.
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