'The Dark Tower' TV Series Will Be "A Complete Reboot"

Even as summer season flop “The Dark Tower” took major hits from critics, and stories emerged about its fractious post-production, everyone involved put on their game faces. Just days before the critically slammed picture opened, “The Walking Dead” showrunner Glen Mazzara was hired to work his magic on the developing TV series. The plan before the movie opened was create a cinematic universe (obviously) that would tell Stephen King‘s epic story on both the big and small screen, with everything linking up together. However, it looks like their pivoting a little bit.

Speaking with Vulture, King shared what he thought were the challenges that faced “The Dark Tower” movie, and revealed that the TV show is still brewing, albeit it sounds like it’s giving the franchise a facelift.

“The major challenge was to do a film based on a series of books that’s really long, about 3,000 pages. The other part of it was the decision to do a PG-13 feature adaptation of books that are extremely violent and deal with violent behavior in a fairly graphic way,” the author said. “That was something that had to be overcome, although I’ve gotta say, I thought [screenwriter] Akiva Goldsman did a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie. The TV series they’re developing now … we’ll see what happens with that. It would be like a complete reboot, so we’ll just have to see.”

There’s no reason why they shouldn’t give “The Dark Tower” another shot from scratch, and frankly, a series probably makes way more sense for that epic material. And if the show were to go into premium cable, there would be no need to worry about violence (remember, King had hoped that a big screen sequel would’ve gone R-rated).

We’ll see how this plays out, but it’s not a big surprise. Everyone wants a piece of King to call their own these days, and the writer is more than happy to oblige.