In the wake of moving from an overall deal with Netflix to Amazon, writer/director Mike Flanagan and his longtime executive producer Trevor Macy have revealed that they have acquired the rights to a screen adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. Flanagan said to Deadline in an interview that he’s already written a pilot script and season outlines for the show, and imagines a series that will run for five seasons and culminated by two self-contained feature films.
The Dark Tower is, at it’s core, a Western. It fuses science-fantasy and horror and sets in the frame of a classic Americana tradition. The plot follows Roland of Gilead as he chases down the mysterious man in black. It’s a very contained story, weaving worldbuilding and travelogue, and when it was first published as a series fo five short stories, fans immediately latched onto it’s genre-mashing and King’s grim style. King later revised and expanded the Dark Tower series, which now stands at eight novels.
The Dark Tower has been adapted before — in 2017 there was an attempt at a film based on The Dark Tower, which starred Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. There was also a pilot episode written for Amazon just two years ago by Glen Mazzara that was never made. However, The Dark Tower isn’t the first King adaptation that Flanagan and Macy have taken on — they made Doctor Sleep (2019) and Gerald’s Game (2017).
While at Netflix Flanagan and Macy created The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, as well as Midnight Mass and The Midnight Club. The latter — a series of interconnected frame stories — was unceremoniously cancelled only days after Flanagan and Macy announced their Amazon deal. Their final Netflix limited series will be The Fall of the House of Usher, an adaptation of Poe’s gothic classic.
Leave a Reply