If you’ve already been following the development of the three movies and two seasons of a TV show based on Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, then you can skip past the rest of this long paragraph. To summarize, in January of last year Javier Bardem was writing the scripts, and Brian Grazer and Stephen King producing. In May of last year, Universal put the pre-production staff on hiatus over concerns about the cost of three big-budget movies bridged by a TV series between each film. In mid-July, Universal passed on the series, presumably because they were spending all their money on a $200 million Battleship board game movie starring Rihanna instead (seriously). Then, last October, our hopes were renewed when Brian “scary hair” Grazer said the movie was still going to get made with a lower budget, and then a couple days later he added that HBO would be handling two seasons of a limited-run TV series. HBO and The Dark Tower? Yes, please.
Now Deadline reports Warner Brothers bought Goldsman’s script and are planning to fund at least the first movie, with Ron Howard directing and Javier Bardem possibly still signed to play the gunslinger. They expect to start filming in the first quarter of 2013, when Howard will be finished filming Rush and Bardem will be done with the next Bond movie, Skyfall. Hopefully, Bardem will be able to play Roland, but, if not, we’ll reiterate our endorsement of these gunslingers as an alternative:
These guys will do any show you want for a sow’s ear and the address to the nearest cathouse.
[Image credits: Shutterstock and Dog And Not Dog]