The Dark Tower Series: Mike Flanagan Officially Announces the Series Based on Stephen King!
Mike Flanagan is testing Prime Video’s waters. The man behind the Haunting and Midnight Mass franchise has revealed that one of the first projects he and producing partner Trevor Macy are eyeing is a series adaptation of The Dark Tower for Prime Video. Not even a week after the announcement of Mike Flanagan’s move from Netflix to Prime Video, the author has already announced an important and ambitious project: the TV series The Dark Tower, an adaptation of the famous literary saga by Stephen King.
The Dark Tower Series: Official Statement
“Prior to our deal with Amazon, we acquired the rights to The Dark Tower”, Mike Flanagan said in a statement. “If you know anything about me, then you know that we are talking about my personal Holy Grail, it is a project that has haunted me for most of my life. It is something that we have developed on our own and we are very excited to finally get to work”. As Variety pointed out, the Dark Tower series isn’t tied to Flanagan’s new deal with Prime Video, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the series won’t end up on Prime Video now, however, the project could be picked up by any service of streaming.
“We look at it as a series that will run for at least five seasons followed by two standalone films,” Flanagan told Deadline. “I have a tremendous amount of work done in my brain… I have a pilot script that I’m excited about and a very detailed outline for the first season and a larger outline for subsequent seasons. I think eventually if we’re able to make it work, there are other writers I want to get involved in that process that I’ve worked with before. The pilot script is one of my favorite things I’ve ever worked on”, adds the author.
The Dark Tower is a series of eight novels in the fantasy genre (a mixture of fantasy, science fiction, horror and western), written by the American author Stephen King. It tells of a “gunslinger” and his pilgrimage to a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. The series is billed as King’s magnum opus – in addition to the eight novels that make up the series, many of his other novels are connected to the story, introducing concepts and characters that come into play as the series progresses.
Mike Flanagan’s Intrepid was previously under an overall deal with Netflix, whereby the company has made several hit shows in the horror genre such as The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight Club. Coming soon, the new (and final) series The Fall of House of Usher, based on Edgar Allan Poe, will be released.
Throughout his career, Mike Flanagan has made numerous Stephen King adaptations, such as Gerald’s Game (also for Netflix) and the Shining Doctor Sleep sequel for Warner Bros. The Dark Tower saga, consisting of eight books, had been previously brought to the big screen in the film The Dark Tower, with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, which obtained poor critical and box office results. For Mike Flanagan, the TV series will consist of five seasons and two films (!) with the pilot script already written.
The Dark Tower: The 2017 Film with Idris Elba
The Dark Tower is recently adapted into a 2017 feature film starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. The film was met with mainly negative reviews: the most common judgments found the plot devoid of ambition, difficult to understand, and accelerated so as not to exceed the relatively short, expected duration, thus resulting in superficial and “forgettable” as well as unable to well represent the original material; among the commonly appreciated aspects, instead, the interpretation of Elba.
