Amazon's cancelled Dark Tower TV show would have had an epic and exciting three-season story arc following The Gunslinger from his youth to adulthood. The show, which was cancelled earlier this year after a pilot had been shot, would have adapted Stephen King's sprawling fantasy series, which currently runs to eight books and one short story, as well as a comic book series.
The adaptation was not the first to be attempted, with a film starring Idris Elba as Roland Deschain, and Matthew McConaughey as The Man In Black, released to theaters in 2017. That effort, produced by Ron Howard and directed by Nikolaj Arcel, was widely criticized for simplifying the epic narrative, and condensing the story into a dull and confusing 90-minute film. It was hoped that Glen Mazzara, the showrunner for Amazon's version, would be able to do King's story justice over a number of seasons. However, that never came to be after Amazon decided not to move forward with the project.
Despite the series stalling at the pilot stage, Mazzara has revealed on The Kingcast, a popular podcast for King-obsessed fans, that he had already planned out the first three seasons of the show. Taking a more linear approach to the story than King does with the books, Mazzara would have spent season 1 exploring Deschain's youth, as seen in the fourth novel, Wizard and Glass. "Season 1 ended with the death of Susan. In Wizard and Glass very quickly you go from the death of Susan to the death of Gabrielle, (Deschain's) mother. I felt that I needed a season to give me real estate so that Gabrielle's death didn't step on Susan's and that it felt like an escalation." Mazzara goes on to say that season 2 would have covered material that is not explicitly seen in King's novels. "For season 2, the war with Farson was building. I was maybe going to use the shapeshifter story as part of season 2 and get to the death of Gabrielle and either the fall of Gilead there or the fall of Gilead would be the season 3 premiere." Finally, Mazzara says, the third season would have adapted material from the first two books:
"Very quickly there would be a last stand at Jericho Hill and by episode three or four of season 3 I was going to have Roland stumble out into the desert, follow him into the desert and then I was going to do a timelapse so that maybe you actually age Roland and switch actors. Then you have a new Roland reset the show at the top of season three, then go into The Gunslinger (Book one) and by the end of that season go into The Drawing of The Three (Book 2)."
King's books have been a popular source for movie and TV writers in recent years, especially in light of the success of Andy Muschietti's IT, and many fans who were disappointed by the movie version of The Dark Tower were excited to see what the Amazon show would look like. Mazzara's comments will be a gut punch for those fans, then, as it seems like not only did he have a detailed outline for the first three seasons, but he also had an in-depth knowledge of the source material, and would have treated it with a great deal of respect.
However, Amazon disagreed, feeling that the show's plot was not as strong as other Prime Video titles currently in development, like The Lord of The Rings and Wheel of Time. So fans are left with the novels, and the disappointing film adaptation of The Dark Tower.
Source: The Kingcast