Last year it was announced Mike Flanagan, a self-avowed Stephen King fan, would develop King’s magnum opus The Dark Tower as a series and two feature films for Amazon Prime but development grounded to a halt due to the WGA strike followed by SAG-AFTRA joining them. Dark Tower fans have little reason to worry though as Flanagan has emphasized the series will be “priority #1” as soon as the strike ends.
The Dark Tower has long been considered an impossible, ‘unfilmable’ project not unlike Lord of the Rings or Dune once were due to the series’ massive scope and ambition. Several attempts have been made in the past to bring it to screen, including the 2017 feature film starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey that failed to win fans and critics over and a previous series for Amazon the streamer had cancelled. Flanagan has been outspoken on developing The Dark Tower as it is his favourite work from the famed author. He has also directed the adaptations of King’s Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep.
Despite the production stop due to the strike, Flanagan told Fangoria’s podcast The Kingcast that prior to the strike’s start development had been going smoothly and into exciting areas, confident they would pick up where they left off with little to no problem.
“I feel really good about where we are,” Flanagan said. “Oddly, where we are at the moment is completely frozen, because of the strike, but we had a wonderful spring with it and we’re making enormous progress on it. And I have every reason to believe that on the other side of the strike, it’s gonna be priority #1.”
Flanagan also teased just how far they had gotten into it, saying there are plenty of exciting aspects for fans he cannot announce yet. “We have great partners on it that I can’t talk about, and we’ve got some really exciting actors circling on it that I can’t talk about, and we have some potentially groundbreaking approaches to the filmmaking of it that I just can’t really talk about … but what I can say is that my fears that any momentum we had developed was gonna be obliterated [by the strike], well, I don’t really worry about that.”
The Dark Tower saga spans eight books and connects to many other King novels, making the series one of his most known and beloved works. We’ll have to wait and see what announcements Flanagan has in store for us once the strike reaches its conclusion.
Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.
