A few weeks ago, we heard Russell Crowe may have been wanted for a pie eating contest to replace Javier Bardem as Roland Deschain in the The Dark Tower. Universal put the three movie and two seasons of a TV show on hiatus last year so they could plow more money into Battleship, a decision which lost them a bunch of money. *Nelson Muntz laugh* In March, Warner Brother’s bought the script with plans to shoot at least one movie. We have bad news and good news about that.
Deadline reports Warner Brothers has now passed on developing The Dark Tower despite badly needing a new franchise to take the place of the Batman and Harry Potter movies. Deadline reached out to Stephen King for a comment: “The Dark Tower, to me, and I’m not unbiased because I’m the writer on this thing, but to me it looks like gold on the ground waiting to be picked up.”
Someone else has already emerged to pick up the potential gold Universal and Warner walked past. Media Rights Capital (MRC) are in talks to take over the Dark Tower franchise. MRC’s Modi Wiczyk is said to be a huge fan and is looking to “capitalize on the positive momentum” they got from making Ted with Mark Wahlberg and a foul-mouthed bear. By “positive momentum” we mean “metric f-ckton of cash”.
Which one of the above paragraphs is the good news and which is the bad news depends on whether you want to see a Dark Tower adaptation from Ron Howard, Akiva Goldsman, and Brian Grazer.