At least since the mega success of “ES” and “ES Kapitel 2” the studios are really fighting again to film Stephen King’s material – whose adaptations, let’s be honest, can’t always shine. But especially King’s probably best and most epic work, the “The Dark Tower” novel series, which offers huge potential with its mix of horror, western, fantasy and sci-fi, no one really wants to venture right now. This is not surprising: an attempt has already been made – and Sony Pictures landed on the nose with Nikolaj Arcel’s feature film “The Dark Tower”, despite an all-star cast with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey.
Maybe that’s because “The Dark Tower” with its massive universe would be more suitable for a series adaptation. A “The Dark Tower” series was long in the works on Amazon Prime Video, but was then scrapped. Mike Flanagan, series creator of “The Goosebumps at Midnight” and “The Haunting of Hill House” among others, would like to give it another go now and already has very specific ideas about what his project “The Dark Tower” would look like.
“It would look like the books… the picture would be black at first, then the words ‘The man in black fled through the desert, and the marksman followed him’ would appear in the silence, and you would hear the wind , and then we’d fade into this ‘Lawrence of Arabia’-esque landscape, with a silhouette crisscrossing the wasteland in the distance, and from there we’d develop everything, one after the other to the end.”
Stay close to the books
Contrary to those words of Mike Flanagan In any case, it is already clear: The filmmaker would aim for a very faithful adaptation of The Dark Tower, because he describes exactly the beginning of the first part “Black”. And that would mean Flanagan is planning to put together a truly epic project—because only then would the eight-book series be adequately captured.
›› “The Dark Tower” – the complete series on Amazon*
Indeed, staying true to the source material seems to be the most important thing for Flanagan. He also spoke about the challenge of translating the fantastic elements of the book series into a film adaptation: “You should take the more fantastic elements, which are a little harder to understand — especially when it gets pretty meta in the middle — and anchor them in the Include story. But beyond that, the characters are who they are and the story is what it is and I think what you shouldn’t do with The Dark Tower is try to make it something different – try to make it Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. It is what it is; and what it is is perfect.”
Mike Flanagan’s Personal Mount Everest
For Flanagan it is his absolute dream project, his Mount Everest. He’s not quite sure yet if he’d make it a series, a movie, or an entire franchise – but he’s already promising it’s going to be very emotional: “There wouldn’t be a dry eye left.”
The main thing is to get to the heart of the story: “It’s a story about a small group of people who actually don’t stand a chance at all, but still come together. As long as it stays that way, it will be fine.”
Flanagan has Stephen King experience
Flanagan is no newcomer to Stephen King: He has also directed The Game for his work-at-home employer Netflix and Stephen King’s Doctor Sleeps Awakening with Ewan McGregor for the big screen. It remains to be seen whether Netflix will one day put the money in its hands to implement Stephen King’s mega-epic – there is currently no evidence of that and the rights should be available and acquired in advance.
In The Dark Tower, Roland Deschain, the last marksman, makes his way to the Dark Tower, which holds the universe together and is about to collapse. To do this, however, he must first overcome the Man in Black, evil personified. With him on his mission are eleven-year-old Jake Chambers, junkie Eddie Dean and Odetta Holmes, who suffers from a personality disorder.
It is not the first time that Flanagan talks about his dream project in an interview. Just a few weeks ago, he revealed that, among other things, the rights situation is an absolute nightmare, but he doesn’t want to let anything stop him: