Stephen King has announced that he is planning a trilogy of films based on his popular fantasy series, The Dark Tower. In an innovative move the films would have TV accompaniment in the form of a series that would fill in the missing gaps that the three films could not cover.
In The Gunslinger, the first book in the The Dark Tower series, Stephen King introduced readers to Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner, on a journey into good and evil, in a desolate world which echoes our own, making his steady way towards the powerful and mysterious Dark Tower.
The director who has been chosen for the film project is Ron Howard, the man behind Splash, Cocoon, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man and The Da Vinci Code. He will be hoping to emulate the success of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy which was famously labelled as “unfilmable”.
"What Peter did was a feat, cinematic history. The approach we’re taking also stands on its own, but it’s driven by the material. I love both, and like what’s going on in TV. With this story, if you dedicated to one medium or another, there’s the horrible risk of cheating material. The scope and scale call for a big-screen budget. But if you committed only to films, you’d deny the audience the intimacy and nuance of some of these characters and a lot of cool twists and turns that make for jaw-dropping, compelling television. We’ve put some real time and deep thought into this, and a lot of conversations and analysis from a business standpoint, to get people to believe in this and take this leap with us. I hope audiences respond to it in a way that compels us to keep going after the first year or two of work. It’s fresh territory for me as a film-maker," commented Howard told Deadline.
The screenwriter chosen for the project is Akiva Goldsman, who worked with Howard on A Beautiful Mind, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.
