Mike Flanagan rose to horror fame by tackling the strange world of Stephen King. From Gerald’s Games to Doctor Sleep, the filmmaker knows how to bring the challenging world of King to life, but his upcoming adaptation of The Dark Tower could be his most challenging yet.
It was announced Mike Flanagan would head to Amazon Prime, where the filmmaker “envisions [The Dark Tower] as a TV series to run for five seasons, followed by two stand-alone features.”
Now, the filmmaker is talking bout his upcoming series while also looking at the 2017 film adaptation that was a commercial and critical bomb. Flanagan says the film took a very different approach from what he planned with this new series.
“[My Dark Tower adaptation] couldn’t be more different [from the movie],” explains Flanagan. “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,” Flanagan continues. “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.”
He concludes, “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.”
Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy’s Intrepid Pictures are adapting The Dark Tower universe, although the project is in its earliest stages and there’s no word yet on any proposed production / premiere dates.
Originally published March 23, 2023. Updated March 24, 2023.
