Not to name any Gemini Man in particular, but sometimes a project comes along after escaping decades in development hell that leaves you wondering if perhaps it may have been better off staying there for good, a sentiment that also applies to Nikolaj Arcel’s The Dark Tower.
The live-action adaptation of Stephen King’s magnum opus had spent 20 years trying and failing to be willed into existence by a number of producers and filmmakers, only for the one audiences ended up getting being irredeemably awful.
Hacked to pieces in the editing room, 95 minutes was nowhere near enough to do justice to such a sprawling epic, even though an extended cut would have no doubt been even more excruciating based on the apathetic reception it received from critics and audiences, in addition to cratering at the box office after earning a measly $113 million.
Under normal circumstances, such a high-profile catastrophe being rebooted just six years later would be a cause for alarm, but the prospect of Mike Flanagan finally fulfilling a lifelong dream and bringing The Dark Tower to Prime Video as an episodic series is an undeniably mouthwatering one.
Sadly, streaming subscribers have decided for some reason that revisiting the original is something worth their time and effort, with FlixPatrol ironically naming it as one of the most-watched movies on Amazon’s platform this week, as well as iTunes.
The world is overloaded with King adaptations and reboots as it is, but Flanagan’s presence alone is enough to ensure The Dark Tower gets a pass, because it isn’t as though he’s put a foot wrong yet when it comes to eerie tales being told exclusively on-demand across the course of a series.