Horror maestro Mike Flanagan has no shortage of projects on his plate, but the most ambitious by far is his long-gestating adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. It’s been three years since Flanagan and his producing partner Trevor Macy secured the rights to King’s sprawling novel series with plans to develop it as a television event, and while progress has been deliberate, the project is still moving forward—slowly, but steadily.
The Dark Tower is First Priority for Flanagan
Speaking with Empire Magazine (via Deadline), Flanagan likened The Dark Tower to an “oil tanker,” adding, “It’s moving. We’ve got a lot of scripts done for it. It’s the first priority.” Flanagan has previously said that he envisions The Dark Tower story being told over the course of five seasons, followed by two feature films.
The Dark Tower has already had one ill-fated trip to the screen in the form of the critically maligned 2017 feature starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. Flanagan is well aware of the sour note that the film left with fans. “We can’t let that be the final word,” he said. “We really can’t.”
Why Did The First Dark Tower Movie Fail?
Despite widespread praise for Idris Elba’s take on Roland Deschain, there wasn’t much goodwill directed at the 2017 film itself. King’s The Dark Tower saga spans multiple novels, yet the adaptation somehow attempted to cram that sprawling mythology into a single 95-minute, PG-13 feature. The studio insisted the movie was technically a sequel to the books, with director Nikolaj Arcel explaining, “It has a lot of the same elements, a lot of the same characters, but it is a different journey.”
Fans weren’t convinced. The film tanked, taking any hope of a sequel down with it. In his review, our own Chris Bumbray summed up the disappointment, calling the film “a muddled mess of an adaptation that plays like someone wrote a young adult novelization of a couple of the books, and that was turned into a movie.”
Flanagan’s Other Projects
Aside from The Dark Tower, Flanagan has wrapped production on a TV series adaptation of Carrie for Prime Video, and he’s also set to tackle a “radical new take” on The Exorcist starring Scarlett Johansson.
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