Universal Studios has wisely decided not to try to create a movie/TV version of Stephen King's epic The Dark Tower series of books.
King's story of Roland, the last Gunslinger, and his quest first to locate and then to save the Dark Tower that lies at the hub of all reality, took him thirty-plus years and seven books totalling more than a million words to finish. Last summer I ruminated about the series at the long-post blog -- check out the entries in May and June of 2010 if you're interested or unable to sleep.
Although it's rooted in a monumental mythic story and has some fantastic concepts and characters at its core, The Dark Tower is, especially in its later books, a sprawling mess whose authorial conceits, lack of storytelling discipline and gaping plot holes cripple it beyond most folks' willingness to stick it out to the end. Universal's latest plan to bring the story to screen -- which would have involved three movies and at least one television series -- offered far too many exit points for the casual fan and the folks who count up how much money gets spent vs. how much money comes in decided the risk was too great.
Some multi-volume series -- Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and maybe Narnia (although the jury remains out) -- have the ability to maintain audience interest across several years and several movies. Even though the core of that audience knows, through its love of the source material, nearly everything that's going to happen, they'll line up to see it onscreen and the story itself appeals to a wider base. Plus, the movies are pretty good or at least un-awful enough that they don't turn people away from the next installment. Some -- Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, for example -- lack the fan loyalty, widespread appeal or quality of movie needed to keep that interest. Some are inexplicably popular, even though both the movies and the books they draw from stink. Twilight, I'm talkin' to you.
Universal has decided The Dark Tower is probably in the second group. And although they're a lot more knowledgeable about the movie biz than me and so probably don't care what I think, I'd have to agree ;-)
3 comments:
gosh, i feel like your blog is very pvm-centric, lately...and i'm most grateful. stark, child, king, oh my!
how great that they pulled the plug on ron "actually, i'm turning out to be quite a hack" howard's bizarre plan to turn the dark tower into several movies AND t.v. miniseries. the casting (bardem? how 'bout daniel day lewis, people?) was dopey, as was the whole multi-year, multi-platform idea. frankly, i had a hard time believing universal ever signed off on it in the first place.
now ron can go back to making bad dan brown movies. there's another dopey book in that series, right?
Yeah, I'm trolling with PVM comment-bait -- coming up soon: "Why All the Chicks Go For Dutchmen."
Agreeing on Howard; I think he's exhausted a lot of his creativity. Or maybe his vision filled a niche that hadn't been filled before, but once he filled it then he had nothing else left. And also I could never see Bardem as Roland; Roland is supposed to be old-looking and Bardem's four years younger than me. Lewis would have worked, or Sean Bean, maybe? Would have been a good one for a late 60s/early 70s Heston.
I think there remains more Dan Brown to be filmed, and I imagine Messrs. Howard and Hanks will soon be in a financial place where they will be happy to do so.
It was never going to work. We may see it someday as a SyFy miniseries starring a refugee from one of the Stargate shows...and Stephen King's stuff has been awful since he grew too powerful to be edited.
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