Actors Were Circling THE DARK TOWER TV Series Before The SAG-AFTRA Strike

Actors Were Circling THE DARK TOWER TV Series Before The SAG-AFTRA Strike

Is The Dark Tower fantasy series more suited for television than film? Stephen King fans all throughout the world are praying Mike Flanagan delivers a more faithful adaptation.

News
By MarkJulian - Aug 12, 2023 08:08 PM EST
Filed Under: Fantasy
Source: sffgazette.com

American writer and director Mike Flanagan (The Midnight Club, The Haunting of Hill House) was a recent guest on the aptly named Kingcast, a Stephen King-focused podcast, and he shared that progress on the live-action television series based on The Dark Tower is going well despite the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike.

To be clear, development on the project has stalled owing to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike, but Flanagan is pleased with where things have stopped. The project's announcement confirmed that there are plans for a five-season television series based on The Dark Tower, which will be followed by two solo feature films.

"I feel really good about where we are. Oddly, where we are at the moment is completely frozen, because of the strike, but we had a wonderful spring with it and we're making enormous progress on it. And I have every reason to believe that on the other side of the strike, it's gonna be priority #1,  Flanagan said on The Kingcast.

"We have great partners on it that I can't talk about, and we've got some really exciting actors circling on it that I can't talk about, and we have some potentially groundbreaking approaches to the filmmaking of it that I just can't really talk about ... but what I can say is that my fears that any momentum we had developed was gonna be obliterated [by the strike], well, I don't really worry about that."

"We're in a healthy place. We are of course in solidarity with the WGA and SAG, and once those immediate needs are taken care of and everyone's back to work, I think that's when we're gonna immediately deploy. But it's going very well."

The Dark Tower fantasy series spans 8 books: The Gunslinger (1982), The Drawing of the Three (1987), The Waste Lands (1991), Wizard and Glass (1997), The Little Sisters of Eluria (1998), Wolves of the Calla (2003), Song of Susannah (2004), The Dark Tower (2004), and The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012). It is inspired by the poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by English poet and playwright, Robert Browning.

Sony and Columbia Pictures released a 2017 adaptation of The Dark Tower that inexplicably tried to serve as a sequel to the novels. The film starred Idris Elba as Roland Deschain and Matthew McConaughey as Walter O'Dim, also known as the Man in Black. Fans of Stephen King's The Dark Tower book series responded very negatively to the 2017 film adaptation, criticizing it for its poor adaptation of the source material.

The series' primary storyline revolves around Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger of Mid-World, and his reality-altering journey to the Dark Tower, a legendary structure said to be the center of all creation. A ka-tet, a group of companions that aid Roland in his objective, joins him on his voyage.

Stephen King's Dark Tower fantasy series has received generally excellent reviews, with many critics complimenting the series for its rich characters, complicated narrative, and epic scale. Some reviews, however, have deemed the series to be inconsistent and slow-paced.

Flanagan previously wrote and directed several horror TV series for Netflix including  The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight Club.

The forthcoming The Fall of the House of Usher will be his final series for Netflix as he recently signed a first-look deal with Amazon Prime Video.

It's thought that The Dark Tower series will end up at Amazon, though Flanagan has stated that he will shop the series to other networks, as well.

BETTER MAN: Robbie Williams Is A CGI Ape In First Trailer For Michael Gracey's Bizarre Biopic
Related:

BETTER MAN: Robbie Williams Is A CGI Ape In First Trailer For Michael Gracey's Bizarre Biopic
GLADIATOR II: Epic New Trailer And Poster Tease A New Legacy...Or Another Rebellion!
Recommended For You:

GLADIATOR II: Epic New Trailer And Poster Tease A New Legacy...Or Another Rebellion!
DISCLAIMER: ComicBookMovie.com is protected under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) and... [MORE]

ComicBookMovie.com, and/or the user who contributed this post, may earn commissions or revenue through clicks or purchases made through any third-party links contained within the content above.

Do you have what it takes to write for us?
Want to contribute?
Origame
Origame - 8/12/2023, 8:33 PM
I think it's pretty disingenuous to suggest dark towers didn't work because it was a movie.
r1g0r
r1g0r - 8/12/2023, 8:35 PM
@Origame -
That was 1 of multiple causes.
Origame
Origame - 8/12/2023, 8:41 PM
@r1g0r - had they tried to be super loyal while sticking to one book (they tried to incorporate all the books), then I'd get the argument. But that isn't the movie we got.
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 8/12/2023, 8:56 PM
@Origame - 100% agreed.

1. It was a sequel of the books, which is NOT what they should have done.

2. It rushed through the entire series and tried to do it all in one film.

3. They didn't understand the content they were making a movie about.

4. They left out Roland's entire Katet, with the exception of Jake. The entire point of Dark Tower is that his "team" of people are integral parts of his journey, no matter how many times he makes the journey. It all has to go a certain way, and it all depends on how he leads his Katet and treats his companions.

5. And I have to say it. The casting of Roland was a horrible miscast. As much as I like Idris Elba, there is one huge reason why he was miscast in the role. And while I may get called a racist by people who have never read these books, Roland HAS to be white. ESPECIALLY in a movie that's supposed to be a sequel to the books.

Why does he have to be white? Because another very important character in his group is black, and she's horribly racist against white people. And like I said earlier, the whole entire point of Roland finally being able to complete his journey once and for all heavily relies on him bringing his companions together and trusting him to the point of being willing to sacrifice themselves if that time comes.

Roland having to deal with a racist party member (who is destined to always be a member of his Katet) is a huge piece of not only his story, but also Suzanna's.

And, let's not forget that, again, this movie was supposed to be a sequel of the books. Roland is white in the books. So how is black in the movie? That's like making Tony Stark white in Phase 1, but then making him black in Phase 2. You can't just swap that kind of thing mid-story.

But it sounds like this guy is a fan and wants to do things right. So I'm really excited to see what we get here.
StSteven
StSteven - 8/13/2023, 4:47 PM
@CorndogBurglar - I agree on all your points, but with a slight variation/clarification of your point on Roland having to be white: he needs to be white within the context of the story being told in the NOVELS, where as you said Detta is extremely racist (her favorite phrase being "honky mahfahs") and her consequential hatred and distrust of white people, particularly Roland, while her other personality was a civil rights activist. So like you said, part of her and Roland's journey across the novels is the building of trust and care for each other within his ka-tet.

But that's within the context of the novels. The film purported to be a sequel to the novels, but it clearly wasn't by only including Jake from his "ka-tet" for the reasons you said above, so by leaving out Odessa/Detta/Suzanne and her whole story they were free to cast whomever they wanted to play Roland. Clearly by trying to cram the whole novel series into one movie was a ridiculous idea from the get go, and whatever studio heads approved this movie clearly had NO familiarity with the source material from the beginning and, wait... (checks ear piece) I'm being told that it was a Sony movie.

Okay, I'll just stop right there. That being said, it will be interesting to see how they (presumably) handle Detta and her extreme profane racism in the TV series because if they water it down too much it was lessen the impact when Suzanna finally emerges and learns to trust and care for the rest of Roland's ka-tet, especially Eddie.
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 8/13/2023, 11:59 PM
@StSteven - It clearly was a sequel of the novels because he had the Horn of Eld at the beginning of his journey. That never happened in any of his other journeys until the end of the book series. Because he had finally learned all the knowledge he needed to finally finish his quest for good. And not only that, but the director himself even confirmed it was a sequel to the novels.

https://gizmodo.com/yes-the-dark-tower-movie-is-a-sequel-to-the-books-1796235912

The people that made this movie just didn't understand what they were making. That's the whole crux of it. Roland has to have his entire Ka-tet. They are all destined to be his companions and without them, he can never succeed. He has to have his companions, and he has to learn humility and how to fully trust in his group.

StSteven
StSteven - 8/14/2023, 9:16 PM
@CorndogBurglar - I think that we're basically saying the same thing here. I understand that the filmmaker intended the movie to be a sequel to the novels (which begs the question "Why would you make a movie that is supposed to be a sequel to a series of novels that the GA isn't likely familiar with and not just make the novel series instead?"), and that the fact that he had the Horn of Eld and the note indicates that it is indeed intended to be a sequel to the novels based on how Book VII ended (and possibly his last time around).

My point was the same thing that you said in your second paragraph, that without his ka-tet in this movie it's not really a sequel to the books, as they were such an integral part of the story in the novels. It's like the just tried to squish seven (pretty lengthy) novels into one movie and consequently cut out SO MUCH of the story, that to me this just isn't a sequel to the story in the novels. And even though King gave his blessing to the movie, it's clearly NOT the sequel he would have written if he had written one.

So the movie might be the sequel to the version of the story that the "creatives" at Sony had in their heads, but it's NOT a sequel to the story from the novels. At least not in my opinion.

FWIW I finished Book VII back in 2005-2006 so this conversation has been good for me to go back and think through everything that happens through out the novel series, especially how it ended. And as a follow up question I have to ask if you've seen "In the Mouth of Madness" (which I'm pretty sure you have). And if so, I have just one follow up question: Do you read Sutter Kane? 😉
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 8/15/2023, 12:11 AM
@StSteven - So, first off, King giving this movie his blessing doesn't mean anything. That guy has given every movie adaptation of his novels his blessing, and there have been some really bad King movies.

People (not you) use that as a reason to say a movie or TV show is good any time the original writer puts their blessing on it. But it's like they are forgetting that the writers stand to make a ton of money off these projects. The projects are getting made one way or another, so why not try to promote it so you can make as much money off it as possible.

To answer your questions though, yeah I've seen In the Mouth of Madness. But it's been a long time. I should probably watch that again. I had to look up Sutter Kane lol. Are you referencing the set of novels from In the Mouth of Madness?
StSteven
StSteven - 8/15/2023, 7:34 PM
@CorndogBurglar - Oh I totally agree on both your points. King even gave a glowing recommendation for "The Flash" and although I haven't seen it yet (and likely won't) so I can't say how good or bad I thought it was, the general consensus seem to be that it sucks and he just said what he said because money. But I don't know one way or the other. Maybe he actually liked it. Dunno.

Anyhow, in the article you provided the link to above he did say "This is not exactly my novel but this is very much the spirt and the tone and I’m very happy." so at least he's acknowledging that the movie wasn't his novel (which is putting it lightly), which I think is the point that you and I are trying to make. Hopefully when he inevitably promotes the upcoming series he actually likes it and means it when he says "I'm very happy".

Regarding "ItMoM", the reason that I bring it up is that as I recall it was based on Stephen King (get it? "Sutter Kane", "Stephen King"?) and how popular his DT series had become (the movie was released a few years before "Wizard and Glass" where I remember people camping out in front of book stores the day before and that was before people actually did that for book releases). It's also based on Lovecraft ("At the Mountains of Madness") and plays around with the idea of reality and who defines what it is.

So in it you have this super popular horror writer who has been writing this series of horror/fantasy novels that are so popular that people are not only lining up the day(s) before to get them when they are released, but if I recall correctly end up looting and shit if they can't get a copy. Then the writer disappears and Sam Neill (who is the agent for the company that insures Kane) has to go looking for him and finds him in this town that doesn't exist but he was able to find by piecing together the covers of Kane's novels. And Neill discovers that the characters and other elements of the novels are real. Or not. Or are they becoming real because SO MANY people believe in them? So are all those people crazy or is he?

It's like, if you believe the sky is blue (and you KNOW it is) but the majority of the population says it's red, then what is reality? Is it just what the majority of the population believes it is? Are you on your way to a bag of weed and a streaming service yet? 😉

BTW, in case you may have forgotten or weren't aware at the time, it's a John Carpenter film. Check please!
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 8/15/2023, 7:59 PM
@StSteven - Thats actually really cool man. I didn't know all that back story about the making of In the Mouth of Madness. Thanks for writing all that. It's pretty interesting.

Something you said made me think of something.

"It's like, if you believe the sky is blue (and you KNOW it is) but the majority of the population says it's red, then what is reality? Is it just what the majority of the population believes it is? Are you on your way to a bag of weed and a streaming service yet? 😉"

So, I'm color blind. I have red/green color blindness. (Can't think of the actual medical term) I can see basic red and green, but when you start getting into different shades of red and green, or colors that are made up of one of those colors (like purples or oranges) I start to get them confused. I mistake blue with purple and yellow with green quite often.

My wife and daughter give me shit about it all the time and I always tell them, what if "colorblind" people are the ones that are seeing the colors correctly, and all you MF'ers are the ones that are wrong?

It's just a joke of a course, but what you said about the color of the sky reminds me of this. Who's to say what color the sky really is? It's just light entering our eyes. Who is to say that an alien race wouldn't have slightly different eyes that causes them to see colors differently than us, as an example.

What's real, man?
StSteven
StSteven - 8/15/2023, 11:09 PM
@CorndogBurglar - Sure, glad to share. I absolutely love that movie because it really makes you think about these type of things (sober or not). I find the philosophy of reality quite intriguing, and the movie makes the point that ultimately, at the end of the day, what we accept as "reality" is what the vast majority of people accept it to be (as I said earlier). In addition to being a Comp. Sci. guy I was also a Psych major for a while and ended up with a minor in that in addition to taking a variety of Philosophy courses, so this type of stuff fascinates me.

As far as the movie goes, yeah it gets kinda deep into that whole stuff and I don't want to spoil anything more than I already have (which was really just a set up as there is a lot more to the movie than what I outlined), but I will say that as Neill's character gets deeper and deeper into his investigation of Kane, he starts to question what's real and what's not more and more as the things from Kane's novels seem to be manifesting themselves more and more as he gets closer to Kane and deeper into the reality that Kane has created within his novels and his fans/followers believe in. It really messes with your head.

But then that takes us back to your last point: how do we really know what's "real" and what's just what (most) everyone has agreed it is? Now being able to prove observable phenomenon with math and science is one thing, but perception is another, especially when it deals with shades of difference and not stark contrasts. For example: if I drop a rock out of my hand onto the ground, that's an observable, measurable phenomenon that no one would argue with. But when you go back to my example of the color of the sky, there's obviously wiggle room there. And how many times have we looked at something and seen an object (like the shape of a cloud) that is CLEARLY one thing and the person that we're with just can't see it, no matter how obvious it is. Hence, who many times have you found yourself saying to your wife "Are you crazy? Of COURSE it's...".

Ultimately, then, it seems the question of sanity comes down to not whether or not your perception of something in reality varies from that of the general population, but HOW FAR it varies. To bring it all back home, I offer an example: clearly the vast majority of people who saw "The Flash" thought that it was mid at best and generally awful overall. However there were a few people who claimed that it was the best superhero movie ever. Those people are cleary crazy and detached from the reality that the rest of us live in. And Stephen King is one of them 😉. Cheers!
r1g0r
r1g0r - 8/12/2023, 8:34 PM
I look forward to them thoroughly screwing the pooch on this.
BlackIceJoe
BlackIceJoe - 8/12/2023, 9:04 PM
Hopefully this time the people behind Dark Tower are more faithful to the IP and don't rush so many things together.
rychlec
rychlec - 8/12/2023, 9:57 PM
This is a fantastic story. Full of adventure, terror, myth and legend. It's all already written out on the page. Like "it"....someone just needs to bring it to life. Mike Flanagan is ready and able.
DocSpock
DocSpock - 8/12/2023, 10:07 PM


That lousy movie flopped because they took the excellent book series, ignored everything it was about that made it great, and took a giant virtue signaling DEI dump all over it while spending zero time thinking about quality or faithfulness to the source material.

It was one of Hollywood's biggest screw ups of the last 20 years. It was a 1000 times worse than the last sh!tty Star Wars trilogy if that's even possible.
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 8/13/2023, 1:24 AM
@DocSpock - I would watch the Star Wars sequel trilogy 100 more times before I watched the Dark Tower movie even once more.
DocSpock
DocSpock - 8/13/2023, 1:40 AM
@CorndogBurglar -

I agree completely. It was that awful.
1stDalek
1stDalek - 8/13/2023, 1:48 AM
The movies shouldn't follow the streaming series, the should book open the adaptation. Start with The Gunslinger as a movie, as it would work best in that format, and build up from there.
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 8/13/2023, 6:54 AM
@1stDalek - It'll be interesting to see what gets laid out where, but I agree. The Gunslinger feels like a movie, not a series. I'm assuming since it's 5 seasons of shows and 2 movies, that seasons 1-5 will be books 1-5, and then the two films will be books 6 and 7. But I don't know. They could decide to leave out Wizard and Glass, as 90% of that is a flashback, and make the 5 seasons all the books (minus Wizard and Glass) and the two movies could be like a 2-parter of book 7?
sideshow06
sideshow06 - 8/13/2023, 11:58 AM
@CorndogBurglar - With respect, I REALLY hope they don't skip over the Wizard and Glass stuff. I generally liked the whole series (though I think it started to lose its way a bit in the last couple of books when the whole "fiction is just alternate reality" theme and Stephen King himself as a character came to the forefront). But the flashback parts were some of the best parts of the whole series, and Wizard and Glass was one of my favorite of the books. The world Roland comes from is far more interesting and rich than the parts of the books that come into versions of our world. Maybe that's just the fantasy fan in me, but to do The Dark Tower and leave out Roland's youth would be an enormous misstep.
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 8/13/2023, 12:30 PM
@sideshow06 - Oh I wasn't saying they SHOULD leave out Wizard and Glass. And I agree with everything you said. But, if they were going to leave out anything, it feels like that would be it, since it isn't taking place in the present story, and isn't pushing it forward. It does give a lot of explanation for why Roland is how he is though.
1stDalek
1stDalek - 8/16/2023, 6:11 PM
@CorndogBurglar - I think S01 could be Book 1 & 2 in one go, then they have 4 seasons to deal with the other 3 book which get considerably thicker.
Wizard and Glass is big, but it seems a good candidate to make into a movie or two, or a limited series a spin-off, basically making it an extra you can watch to enhance the main show. It being mostly flashbacks you'd need a separate cast for it which might be hard to get into the tv show, sidelining the main cast for a year.
inkniron
inkniron - 8/13/2023, 12:50 PM
Wouldn’t surprise me if he dirties him up a little bit and enlists Oliver Jackson Cohen again
Related Headlines
Latest Headlines

Hot Headlines Hot Headlines

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Anime & Manga

Gaming

Horror

Cartoons & Animated Features

Action Movies & TV

Pro Wrestling & MMA News
View Recorder