Stephen King has long been America’s favorite (and best) horror writer ever since he first hit big with Carrie in 1974. However, all the works of his tremendous oeuvre—including The Shining, Salem’s Lot, It, and Misery—it’s his seven-book-long series of The Dark Tower that has kept his truest fans in its fevered grip. One such fan is new horror golden boy Flanagan, of the recent King adaptations Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, who has just announced he’s got the fabled tower in sight.
The books—a mishmash of fantasy, Westerns, horror, sci-fi, action, adventure and every other thing—are like taking a jaunt through the mind of King and touching on everything that’s ever influenced him, which makes King’s work notoriously hard to adapt. How does one adapt an author’s imagination? It’s why a series of attempts have ended almost as quickly as they began until Sony rushed out a movie starring Idris Elba as the titular gunslinger, Roland Deschain of Gilead, and Matthew McConaughey as Randall Flagg, Roland’s nemesis and the nemesis of a few other King books (principally The Stand). It sank like a lead balloon as most low-budget, quickie productions do and left fans despairing of anyone else willing to take the risk.
So now it seems like there’s the perfect cocktail for The Dark Tower: A fan of the material in Flanagan (who knows his way around the thornier parts of King adaptations), a studio not shy with throwing around the money, and an audience hungry for the next big fantasy thing. In other words, if it couldn’t be pulled off under these circumstances, the series probably couldn’t be pulled off at all, as it doesn’t appear that there will be a riper opportunity or talent involved with as deep a love of the material. Fans should keep their fingers crossed—and maybe their toes—but it seems Flanagan and Macy have remembered the faces of their fathers and, like Roland’s seemingly miraculous gunshots, might pull off the impossible with King’s The Dark Tower.
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Source: Deadline
