Universal Reconsidering The Dark Tower

Universal already pulled the plug on the ambitious horror adventure At the Mountains of Madness even with Guillermo Del Toro in the driver’s seat.

And now the bean counters have their eyes on Stephen King’s The Dark Tower project proposed to mix a series of feature films and Television mini-series/seasons to fill the gaps.

Universal is getting cold feet about another expensive epic. The studio has had a series of meetings this week to discuss “budgetary complications” that have arisen on THE DARK TOWER and are reevaluating their plans for the franchise

I can see where they are coming from with this. The plans for The Dark Tower sound like the only way to do the wildly creative and indepth Stephen King classic, but considering its relative niche following and its uncertain market appeal, does the studio want to sing a metric pantload of money into this?

I can see their hesitation, however done smart they could trim budgets and keep it humble. The series itself is not overly elaborate in setting as much as it is in scope. The entire series is heavily character driven with very simple surroundings.

This could be done on a simple budget, and if successful they could commit more later.

We will have to wait and see.

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6 thoughts on “Universal Reconsidering The Dark Tower

  1. I think ithey should just scrap the whole project and leave the story where it belongs…on paper! The fact that they cast Javier Bardem as Roland already doomed the whole thing. He is in no way, shape or form Roland and would not have been believable in the role. I think a story of this magnitude would never translate well on the big screen and there is no way they would do the story justice. There are so many minute, yet very important details in the story and there is no way they would be able to capture it all on film, even with the planned mini-series and now that budget seems to be a concern, I am afraid that they will cut corners where they shouldn’t and the whole story will be lost. Please…just leave it be!

  2. The more I think about it, the more an HBO style series makes sense. You could easily have 5 years worth of 1 hour episodes that would be outstanding. Get good writers on board, secure a talented cast and this series would flourish.

  3. Why not just cut the thing down the middle and sell it off to HBO/Showtime? I’m sure they’d like a project like this, could handle the scope and make something fans would like… give Universal a piece of the action and I’m sure it could happen.

  4. Seems like they could easily take a “Game of Thrones”-type approach if they are worried about the marketability of a movie t the general public.

  5. “The entire series is heavily character driven with very simple surroundings. ” THIS! all the money spent should be on getting a lead for Roland.

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