By most accounts, the film adaptation of The Dark Tower was a disaster. The film managed $111 million worldwide at the box office according to Slash Film, slapping a big question mark on the initial plans to create a television series from the film and tell the full story of Stephen King’s epic series.
Surprisingly, that might still happen. It just won’t be based on the movie and the events within it. As Slash Film points out, Dark Tower director Nikolaj Arcel was excited for the prospect of the series and had a hand in writing the pilot. While the aim of the film was to create something that would open the story and be a standalone production, it now seems like it might stand alone entirely if it goes forward. Stephen King confirms as much in a chat with Vulture, indicating that a TV adaptation is in development and would be a “complete reboot”:
The major challenge was to do a film based on a series of books that’s really long, about 3,000 pages. The other part of it was the decision to do a PG-13 feature adaptation of books that are extremely violent and deal with violent behavior in a fairly graphic way. That was something that had to be overcome, although I’ve gotta say, I thought [screenwriter] Akiva Goldsman did a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie. The TV series they’re developing now … we’ll see what happens with that. It would be like a complete reboot, so we’ll just have to see.
Even with the failure of The Dark Tower and The Mist, adaptations of Stephen King’s work this year are still firmly in the “fresh” column if we can borrow a term from another site. Mr. Mercedes is coming back for a second season on the Audience network, Gerald’s Game garnered plenty of praise when it premiered on Netflix, and It is a smash hit for horror fans at the box office.
There’s always hope that The Dark Tower can somehow be adapted the proper way, so maybe the failure of the film will help to usher that into existence.
(Via Slash Film / Vulture)
