‘The Dark Tower’ Director Talks The Risk Of Making Stephen King’s “Completely Unadaptable” Novels

“The Dark Tower” opens this weekend (our review), and despite Sony and Media Rights Capital boldly pushing forward with plans for a TV spinoff, the critical reception has left many skeptical that it will actually happen. The job of bringing Stephen King‘s series of novels to the big and small screen is certainly no easy task, given their grand scope and ambitious storytelling, and even director Nikolaj Arcel initially felt it was a fairly impossible task.

“I always felt like it’s not going to happen. No one’s ever going to adapt it, because it’s completely unadaptable. It’s a crazy, sprawling, genre-hopping saga,” he told THR.

The way into the material was to start in the middle of the book series, and make the first movie an introduction to the world of “The Dark Tower.” It minimizes the risk, and makes the bar a bit lower for the success needed to keep the franchise going.

READ MORE: ‘The Dark Tower’ Director Explains Film’s 95-Minute Runtime

“It’s not a big, $150 million, huge, massive [film]….If we make it for a little bit smaller, tighter, more intimate, that’s a way to take some chances and do something that’s a little more complex and a little more mysterious and at times a little odd, which we need,” Arcel explained. “It’s ‘The Dark Tower,’ right? They said, ‘Let’s start it up like this and see if we can introduce the world and the characters to a broader audience.’ And then, if they like it, and if enough people go see it, we’ll probably be able to grow and grow and get more and more into the even more epic quality of the sequels that come — the novels.”

“[With this budget] you are also able to take the risk of doing something that’s kind of complex and creating something new. It’s a very well-known entity, but more people know ‘The Stand‘ and ‘It‘ than ‘The Dark Tower,’ if you talk to Stephen King fans. It’s not like Spider-Man. It’s a different kind of beast. It was nice we could take a little more risk with it in a way,” he added.

Certainly, everyone had the best of intentions, but things didn’t go as planned, and apparent behind-the-scenes squabbling certainly didn’t help. It’s likely that the big screen sequel won’t happen, but we’ll see what audiences think when they go to the multiplex this weekend.