Mike Flanagan opens up about how The Dark Tower movie got it totally wrong, and how it's affecting his upcoming series. The Dark Tower movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, which was co-written and directed by Nikolaj Arcel, was a critical and commercial failure in 2017 and widely considered the wrong approach to adapting Stephen King's eight-book saga. Late last year, it was revealed that The Dark Tower was being developed into a series by Flanagan, known for his Netflix horror shows The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass and his other King adaptations, Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep.
During a recent appearance on the Script Apart podcast, Flanagan opened up about how The Dark Tower movie was the wrong approach to King's source material, and how its critical and commercial failure "salted the earth" for future adaptations, including his own.
However, with a planned adaptation that differs greatly from the failed 2017 film and a previously canceled series at Amazon, Flanagan was able to overcome the damage that was done and appears to have gotten his own adaptation off the ground. Read what he said below:
[My Dark Tower adaptation] couldn't be more different [from the movie]. That was the wrong approach to the material, kind of across the board, and it was such the wrong approach that I think it kind of salted the earth for anyone else who wanted to plant something under the Dark Tower banner for who knows how long. But that's what we're running into trying to get the show going, is the movie did an enormous amount of damage to the potential [of] getting another iteration up. And they were able to overcome it for an Amazon [Studios] series that took another, different approach again -- that is very different than the one I am proposing -- and that didn't get off the ground. So that has also directly impacted -- and I'm at Amazon! That's my studio now for television, and I can understand going to them and saying "Hey, would you like to walk exactly down the same title that you spent all this money on, that you still feel bruised from." I understand the issues.
Everything We Know About The Dark Tower Series
Late last year, it was reported that Flanagan and his producing partner Trevor Macy had acquired the rights to The Dark Tower as part of their overall deal with Amazon. Flanagan's plan is to adapt King's ambitious, cross-genre saga into 5 seasons of television, which would be followed by two standalone movies. Flanagan previously called The Dark Tower his dream project and shared his vision for the first shot of The Gunslinger, taken right from the first sentence of the first book, "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
Despite his overall deal at Amazon, Flanagan made previous comments indicating The Dark Tower series may not stream on Prime Video, as it does yet have a streaming home. No matter where The Dark Tower series ends up, fans can rest assured knowing that the adaptation is in the hands of someone who understands the fundamental issues with the 2017 film, which pulled from all seven novels to tell a mostly original story. Based on his comments, Flanagan's series seems to be a more accurate adaptation of The Dark Tower.
Source: Script Apart