Three years after it was announced, Mike Flanagan is closer than ever to bringing his series adaptation of Stephen King‘s The Dark Tower to life.
The acclaimed horror filmmaker called the upcoming series an “oil tanker” as he shared an update on his and Trevor Macy’s Intrepid Pictures take on King’s series of books that were released from 1982 to 2012.
“It’s moving,” Flanagan told Empire Magazine. “We’ve got a lot of scripts done for it. It’s the first priority.”
Following the 2017 Nikolaj Arcel-helmed feature adaptation, Flanagan said, “We can’t let that be the final word. We really can’t.” Starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, the film currently holds a 16% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
In 2022, Flanagan told Deadline exclusively that he’d completed a pilot script for the adaptation, which he envisions as running for five seasons, followed by two stand-alone movies.
Mike Flanagan of ‘The Life of Chuck’ at the Deadline Studio held at the Bisha Hotel during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 7, 2024 in Toronto, Canada
“You’re the first person we’re saying it to, but yes,” he said at the time. “Predating our deal with Amazon, we acquired the rights to The Dark Tower, which if you know anything about me, you know it has been my Holy Grail of a project for most of my life.”
Flanagan added, “We actually have those rights carved out of our Amazon deal, which doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t get behind it at some point — you don’t know. But that’s something we’ve been developing ourselves and are really passionate about finally getting it up on its feet at some point.”
Amazon Studios previously opted not to pick up a Dark Tower series from executive producer/showrunner Glen Mazzara and MRC in 2020.
