The joint venture of NBC and Universal Studios to bring Stephen King’s Dark Tower series to life with Ron Howard producing a combination of feature films and TV Series have fallen to the wayside.
The project is officially dead.
The project was scheduled to start shooting in Spring 2012, but Deadline is reporting that the tower has crumbled and Universal has decided to abandon the project entirely.
This news comes after script changes and the project itself was modified when The Dark Tower was threatened with a suspected turnaround; a turnaround that both parties deny ever happening.
So while both parties involved are not saying, it is looking like it was just too big of a project to make happen.
Considering its narrow market appeal and undeniably massive udertaking this would have required is it really any surprise that they backed down.
Despite the popularity of Stephen King’s works, even this would have a hard time finding a broad audience. The whole series is a tough swallow and treads on some strange grounds. A testament to King’s creativity, however not the easiest story to market as a feature film or TV series.
Earlier this year Mountains of Madness (the HP Lovecraft horror) was axed purely because of its limited market and big budget. Speculation says the same of Dark Tower. TV series’ that are just getting modest reviews are canceled on a whim. Studios are not willing to take these kinds of chances without a homerun.
Sad that Dark Tower never got a chance at bat.
