Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy Planning Massive Adaptation Of Stephen King's "THE DARK TOWER"
Last week we learned some big news that Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy’s Intrepid Pictures is making a jump from Netflix to Amazon Studios. What’s the next big project for the duo? Well, the just revealed to Deadline this week that they’re getting set to climb Stephen King’s The Dark Tower!
The project, Flanagan notes, exists separately from Intrepid’s deal with Amazon Studios at this time, but he says he’d be “thrilled” if Amazon did decide to pick up the epic-sized series.
Mike Flanagan tells Deadline, “You’re the first person we’re saying it to, but yes. 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. 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.”
“I wrote a pilot; we view it as a series that’s going at least five seasons,” Flanagan continues. “And having lived with this project as long as I have, I have an enormous amount of it worked out in my brain. But I have a pilot script I’m thrilled with and a very detailed outline for the first season and a broader outline for the subsequent seasons. I think eventually, if we’re able to get it going, there are some other writers I want to fold into that process whom I’ve worked with before; I think they would be really fabulous for a very small, intimate writers room where we can continue to break it. I’ll tell you, more than half of my life, I’ve closed my eyes and been able to watch a lot of this play out, I’ve dreamed about this. That first shot which comes right off at the first incredible sentence of the first book, The Gunslinger, I’ve had that image just rattling around in my head since I was an undergrad. It’s going to have to get out of there eventually.”
Flanagan is of course no stranger to King adaptations, having directed both Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. He hopes the planned TV series will eventually spawn feature films based on King’s The Dark Tower novels as well, but he’s not putting the cart “too far ahead of the horse.”
Released back in 2017, the Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey-starring feature film The Dark Tower was intended to kick-start a universe of adaptations, but sadly, the box office didn’t do well for the film and thus put a hold on all those plans. In the years since, Amazon had been attempting to get their own series adaptation off the ground.
Could the stars be finally aligning themselves for a proper adaptation? We’ll keep you posted on more when we get it.
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