Mike Flanagan is an expert when it comes to Stephen King adaptations, delivering chilling films like Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game. He also has a record of bringing horror fans fantastic series such as “The Haunting of Hill House.”
His next King adaptation, a series based on The Dark Tower, will be a challenge. It’s been adapted before, in 2017, and was disliked by fans and critics alike. Often described as “unfilmable,” the source material is spread over eight books, featuring more than 4,000 pages, making it a challenging to fit a series format without multiple seasons. But that hasn’t detoured Flanagan, and if anyone can do it right, it’s him.
With the strikes shaking up the film industry, leaving many films and series abandoned and delayed, people have begun to question if Flanagan’s “The Dark Tower” would be one of them. But Flanagan has not given up, and thankfully the strike is over.
During a recent conversation with Fangoria, Flanagan gave an update on the series and its current status.
“We had a wonderful spring with it, and we’re making enormous progress on it,” Flanagan said, “and I have every reason to believe that on the other side of the strike, it’s gonna be priority #1.”
Here’s the bad news, as far as we know, the series doesn’t have a home, yet.
“We carved it out from our Netflix deal, knowing we were leaving, and we carved it out from our Amazon deal as well, knowing that they’d already tried to do a Dark Tower adaptation and might be reluctant to do it,” he said. “So, The Dark Tower doesn’t have a studio. We don’t have a partner on it yet, so I’m developing it myself, which is really a blast.” Flanagan told the Script Apart podcast.
What streaming service will partner with Flanagan for “The Dark Tower” series if Netflix and Prime Video aren’t interested in taking a risk on it? If Apple TV was willing to take a chance with “See” and Max with “Last of Us,” which turned out to be a significant hit, either would be a great potential home for “The Dark Tower.”
We will keep you posted as we learn more. If you haven’t seen Flanagan’s previous King adaptations, Gerald’s Game or Doctor Sleep, which we highly recommend, you can watch them now on Netflix.
