Several years back, The Dark Tower was in development at Universal with Ron Howard directing, and this adaptation of the Stephen King fantasy series was quite ambitious. It was going to be three movies, and a TV series that was going to fill in the gaps between films, but Universal eventually passed on it, because it was too financially risky. (This was also during the period the studio was losing its ass on Battleship.)
The project was also passed over by Warner Brothers, and most of us geeks figured it died right then and there. But as Howard recently told Empire and Collider, The Dark Tower is “something that we’re still working on. We’ve all taken a vow of silence about the progress, the headway, what we think our timetable is, because I don’t think I realized how much media interest there was in the title, and how much excitement there was.”
Besides the epic scope of the project, another conundrum was the epic budget. “Even Stephen King acknowledges it’s a tricky adaptation,” Howard continued. “From a financing side, it’s not a straightforward, four-quadrant, sunny superhero story – it’s dark, it’s horror. That edge is what appeals to me, the complexities of those characters is what appeal to all of us.”
Howard concluded by saying The Dark Tower has “never gone away…it got delayed. We’re working on it, and Stephen is very patient with us.” Which is definitely good news, because the fans would love to see it one day. If it’s too expensive for the big screen, it’s also a natural for cable. (Anyone pitched this to HBO?)
