Remember that Dark Tower movie that came out last year? No? I don’t blame you – it was one of the biggest flops of 2017, receiving horrible reviews and being all but disowned by creator Stephen King. Fans of the book series despaired, presumably figuring that the property would never get the careful adaptation it merited. But now they’re getting another bite of the cherry, courtesy of Amazon.
Interestingly, it looks like the show won’t be totally disconnected from the poorly received movie. According to Syfy, the pilot script has been written by the film’s director, Nikolaj Arcel, in collaboration with Anders Thomas Jensen, who’ll oversee the series alongside former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara. Meanwhile, veteran screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, Solo: A Star Wars Story’s Ron Howard and Imagine Entertainment founder Brian Grazer are set to executive produce.
The outlet goes on to say that “while the Dark Tower movie was a standalone mish-mosh of King’s eight books, the TV show will be more faithful to the original series.” In fact, it’s rumored that it’ll follow a prequel narrative and closely adapt the fourth novel in the trilogy, Wizard and Glass. While fans should be breathing a sigh of relief that it’ll try its best to recreate King’s source material, the involvement of some the film’s production staff may still give them pause.
That being said, The Dark Tower will join a seriously promising slate of science fiction and fantasy being put together by Amazon. The most eye-catching is an arguably unnecessary mega-budget adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Admittedly, I am curious about this, but it just feels a little too soon to be remaking the books after Peter Jackson’s iconic take on the franchise.
Other than that, we’ll be seeing shows based on Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, Larry Niven’s Ringworld, Iain M. Banks’ Culture, Greg Rucka and Michael Lark’s Lazarus, and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. That’s pretty much a dream line-up of material for me – and if they can match the quality of the excellent American Gods, they’re in with a chance of toppling the mighty Netflix as the streaming service of choice.