We have word today that a seven film adaptation of The Dark Tower book series may be brought to the silver screen by way of Damon Lindeloff and J.J. Abrams. We get the scoop from the mouth of Lindeloff via our friends at ropeofsilicon:
The Dark Tower is to me every bit as daunting an adaptation as the Lord of the Rings trilogy must have been for Peter Jackson, except we’ve got seven books we’re looking at. And the idea of doing that at the same time Carlton and I are bringing Lost to a close is simply not viable. There are always Dark Tower conversations, but the figuring out of what this will look like as a movie has not begun. If The Dark Tower were in the right hands, I would love to see seven movies executed just right. But you have to get people to see the first one to get them to come and see the second one.
I haven’t read any of these books, so I am really in the dark here. I know that Steven King films are usually a flip of the coin, if they plan seven films; I think four good ones should be considered a success.
For those of you that have read the series please share your thoughts with us. I often beseech our reading readers to fill us in on book adaptations and I am eternally grateful for your assistance. From what I understand, the books are fairly lengthy; do you think these books are even able to be condensed into seven films?
I’ve read this series, and to be honest, it is the best piece of literary work I’ve ever read. I’ve read some of the books twice, just because the characters are so likeable and I missed them. Stephen King has a Dickens-like ability for intense character development which could be a big draw for getting the viewers to return for each movie. The only problem I foresee is getting the same actors to commit to all seven movies. But I can tell you that Stephen King fans are fanatics and we would see the movies over and over and over and over. You have no idea how much I want to see this made!
No More Viggo!
Timothy Oliphant would be a good Roland.
Definately have to be rated R.
Could be squeezed into 4 or 5 movies.
I’ll direct it!
The Dark Tower would definitely be better served as a TV series vice seven lengthy movies. A format similar to Lost would be excellent. Much of what happens in the books can be described through flash-backs. And, considering how Stephen wrapped up the seventh book, its conceivable that Roland could even have “flash-backs” of things that are yet to happen.
Some ideas for a dreamcast…
Roland… Daniel Craig or Viggo Mortensen
Eddie… Steve Buscemi
Susanah… Rosario Dawson
Man in Black… Harvey Keitel
I think Bruce Campbell should be Roland. And Cloris Leachman should be Rhea of the Coos, provided she’s still around by the time they get to the fourth movie.
i have to disagree with the above comment(in some ways at least)
i whole heartedly agree to the suggestion regarding chronology, Time itself becomes an issue within the story and the characters themselves find themselves sifting from 1 time and place to another, co-incided with the time sifting narrative, I imagine this would make any movie productions far too complicated to be a commercial success. Therefore it would have to be restructured, and i very much like the idea that is suggested for the first installment. in commercial terms i also think it would be a succes the youthfulness of roland in these parts of the story, combined with fantastic script would make that a production appealable to a large age range. however i have to disagree with the notion of cutting huge chunks of the story, at the very least certain parts should be minimilised but the story is the story, ive noticed this sort of comment several times, but oddly everyone has read in full books 1-7! just like myself and millions more. my favourite king book is actually needful things its such a clever and imaginative book. there is a film version, its absolutely appaling , the so called, disposable parts are left out and the story gets lost it becomes almost like a slideshow of events, that are not what the tale is about. (i would actually like to ask mr lindeloff to read needful things because if dealt with right it could make a fantastic one off tv series, the movie afterall is quite obscure)
The dark tower is a masterpiece along with the green mile and the shawshank redemption and it deserves the same treatment when put to film. thats not to say it should not be cinematic, because it is so much more thrilling and fast moving than the afforementioned, bit without the real story it could fast become a cinematic parody before the whole story has been released on film
I think the DT series would translate to films if they were broken up a little differently. Sort of like the Rings Trilogy, which was actually written by Tolkien as 6 books, not 3. I think the DT books could be edited and condensed into 3 or 4 solid movies, dispensing with some parts of the story, like Stephen King’s own appearance as himself (though he can still do his signature cameo), the wizard of oz portion, maybe the part about Blaine the Mono, and much of Book 6. You might even take the meat of Book 4, which is a flashback to Roland’s first gunslinging adventure with his childhood friends Cuthbert and Alain, and make it into the first movie, along with his coming-of-age tale from The Gunslinger. Those were some of the best parts of the books, and would be most likely to get the viewers hooked on the movies.
If done well, the movies could rival Star Wars and the Rings trilogy.
ALTHOUGH I SAY I WOULD LIKE TO SEE SEAN BEAN CAST AS ROLAND, WHILST READING I OFTEN TRY TO IDENTIFY CHARACTERS AND GIVE THEM A FACE. WHILST I WAS READING THE DARK TOWER ROLAND WAS CROCODILE DUNDEE!!
(Type your comment here. Make sure you’ve read the commenting rules before doing so)the dark tower is too epic for the big screen it should be a tv series. characters i would lke to see cast are
roland;sean bean and eddie;sawyer(from lost)
Read all 7 books, wished I hadn’t. These are the only King books I have read and will likely always find something else to read than him from now.
Dude jumped the shark bigtime about half-way through this series.
However, I think there is a lot of good material here for as much as a trilogy of movies if a good screen writer is involved and willing to throw more than half of the source away (not change, throw away). The story of young Roland the gunslinger could be brought to the screen so easily I have always been shocked nobody has done it.
I’ll be more comfortable with JJ doing his own interpretation if the Star Trek reboot lives up to the hype.
***semi-spoiler-alert***
lol! Tim Curry as the Crimson King. He should play the Dandelo from book 7.
I loved the first four books. Then I read Hearts in Atlantis, Insomnia and Black House. I was really looking forward to DT5~7. And what did I get? Stephen King (both the character and the writer) totally destroying the foundation and stating that those books were just “mindtraps” ie:
1.The Crimson King from Insomnia is pure badass, while in DT7 is just a joke.
2. Patrick Danville from Insomnia is interesting and by the painting he draws you know an incredible confrontation between The Gunslinger and The Crimson King at the end of #7… instead we got the lamest end for a villian.
3. The characters from Black House are left unused. Really sad.
4. I could go on and on (just like that Celine Dion’s song that Mr. King hates very much)
Leave the books untouched… or make JJ do his own interpretation of the books.
They need to tread very carefully here. These books are loved and loved again by millions. These are Stephen King’s crowning achievement and I would hate to see them ruined by the big screen.
They should use the Marvel comic series approved by King as the storyboards for these films.
FIrst of all, this could EASILY be condensed. Only two books truly have the NEED to tell all of the story, Drawing of the Three and Wizard And Glass. I think they should go to the Sci-Fi channel with this and do a 12-15 hour miniseries. With possibly a la The Clone Wars release in theaters 6-8 weeks prior to TV premiere.
In my mind it’s about the only way this would make sense…
Wishful/Possible Casting…(I’ve read all seven books)
The Gunslinger
Harrison Ford as Roland
Mark Hamill as Walter/Randall Flagg
Drawing of the Three
Joseph Gordon Leavitt as Eddie (Damn you Brad Renfro you would’ve been perfect)
Sherri Saum (Rescue Me) as Detta/Odetta/Susannah
Cole or Dylan Sprouse(Big Daddy) as Jake
The Waste Lands
Matt Frewer as the TIck Tock Man…Get it?
Wizard and Glass
Brendan Gleeson as Cort
Ryan Reynolds as Young Roland
Ethan Embry as Alain
Nathan Fillion as Cuthbert
Robert Englund as Eldred Jonas
David O’hara as Roy Depape
Elizabeth Taylor as Rhea of the Coos
Wolves of the Calla
Clint Eastwood as Father Callahan
Song of Susannah
Morgan Freeman as Calvin Tower
The Dark Tower…
Tim Curry as the Crimson King!
I think Daniel Day Lewis needs to be Roland. But I like some of your other choices.
Holy shit i was just thinking about this series…..awesome stuff in my opinion….everything all these people have talked about are pretty much dead on…..roland is da shit and wtf with jake cant do it…..what u need to do is animation in the style of afro samurai i would watch this in a 4 seasons for sure every episode…..but movies would fuck it up like Dune series etc. but mainly the issue with jakes age thru out the series
im pretty sure about 80% of the fanboys would agree on me with this….and also i really havent read any other king work but have seen the movies so alot of the inside jokes i really didnt get….but to be honest i didnt need to cause the descriptive nature of his style made me have a sense of everything.
Ugh, I’m a King fan and I love sci-fi, but this series could not hold my interest. Seven live-action films would be a huge mistake. They’d make it to four and the audience would wane so much that they’d be throwing money down the toilet on the last three. Fans of the books would feel betrayed, and people who hadn’t read it would be left with a sour taste in their mouths.
A friend of mine is a huge fan of this series, and we’ve actually talked about a possible adaptation a few times. We agreed that a cable mini series would be best (to make it US R-rated), and animation could be an interesting spin, too.
Doug, think LOTR crossed with Excalibur and the Man With No Name for the Dark Tower series.
I disagree with the naysayers, the series went the only way it could and it ended honestly. I do agree the first three books are the best. The second is my favourite – The Drawing of the Three.
This would make an awesome series but I don’t see how it could be done live action as the character of Jake is 11 throughout the series. No way the entire series could be filmed without him aging.
Animation may be the only way to do this series.
Ahh… fantastic series (I’ve actually only read the first 6, going to start the 7th soon). I think it will translate terribly though. There is just way too much and POTENTIAL SMALL SPOILER how will they not age Jake at all? END POTENTIAL SPOILER
UncleJ you are right. You CAN change the story to fit it into film. I think that sadly this will make no one happy. I will admit this: my unstated premise is that the Dark Towers and and all novel adaptations should remain as faithful as possible to the books, a very unpopular opinion here, but that’s what I think. I don’t mean that they can’t remove anything, but I’d rather they trim them a la TLOTR rather than Harry Potter. But, if anyone is unclear from my last post I hate the ending of this series.
It leaves me in a pickle. Which is why my post was so ranty.
Now, having said that, I still assert that making the books into movies is a bad idea because its the wrong medium, TV would be better.
I think is King was cool enough (I’m betting he’s not) he will give the secret, original ending to the people adapting the work (he won’t). They will make it into a kick ass violent bloody gross and scary HBO series unfit for a young audience (they won’t)
They might, like you said, keep all the meta-verse stuff and just cut out king. That would be a good compromise.
That in a nutshell, is my opinion.
Oh my god I will be the first one in line for these tickets. A character with the name Gunslinger, and a sci-fi-ish story. I’m fucking in.
oh yeah, and Stephen King is okay too.
(Type your comment here. Make sure you’ve read the commenting rules before doing soPaul
dont take this the wrong way but to be honest I find your thoughts to be false you bring up the fact that the first movie would be very good and that the next 6 wouldent you bring up the fact that its the center of kings world of fiction and thus has many inside jokes to the rest of kings world these problems solve themselves in the hands of a good screen writer you can adress the issue of movie lenth bycuting out certain scenes like the village at river crossing scene from the Wastlands and several other HOWEVER I do agree that it was a bullshit move to make himself a charicter of importane in the books but yet again why dose this have to be included in the movie? the answear is it dosent just imagine all the things in the book that deal with king himself just not being in the movie the flow of the movie would still be the same the TET corperation would still have the job of pertecting the rose just not king himself just some thought and yet again it would make the 6th movie shorter. well bye for now )
I’ve read the books, even started writing a screen adaptation of the first book for film school. I quickly realized that the best medium for a faithful adaptation of this work would be to do a feature film for the first one and then to just go home. Do the classy thing by stopping while you’re ahead.
If you must do the whole story, then the best way to go is either an adult-oriented animated series, or at bear-minimum a three-season live-action series on a cable network, and not just so you can swear and put huge holes in horrible people. The most important reason to go for a TV series is that over the course of the story the characters age three or four years, and one of them is a very young kid, I think about nine years old. If you made them into films the kid would be voting age by the end. (Strangely, the writers for TV’s Lost must know how a child actor’s aging can complicate a story and throw off viewers, since they’ve seemed to do a great job dealing with the Walt character.)
I would want to do a TV series for other reasons as well. For one The book’s lengths and story density vary greatly, just like the Harry Potter series. The first film would be very well paced, but the rest would be over three hours, and even then terribly compromised in their plotting…just like Harry Potter. Like most books, the last six don’t lend themselves to the three act feature film structure. In fact, the third one ends on a cliff hanger so annoying that it might cause everyone to poke their noses into the 4th book and ruin it. If you made it a TV series, you could easily work it so that every episode ending in a cliff hanger, which more suits the stories action-adventure leanings anyway.
Also, the books have very different feels. The first one, if done right, would be the most fucked up spaghetti-style western you’ve ever seen. The Gunslinger Roland and his world were very much based on Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name, but post apocalyptic sci-fi. End-world is full of rabid ‘the-end-is-near’ zealots, desert wastelands, mutants and advanced but forgotten technology. Its a dark, brutal and bloody story of murder, betrayal and revenge. There’s a scene where Roland takes peyote, and lets a succubus demon rape him to get information from her! Doesn’t that sound like a kick-ass movie? Don’t you want to see that right now, Doug? Too bad, because by comparison the rest of the books are more ‘young adult’ reading. My point is, if you gave even these first four films to different directors like the Potter Films, they would have a hell of a time pulling together as one story. As for the last three, well, hell if I know because at that point the story really comes off the rails and eats a shit sandwich.
Here’s the real problem: Stephen King took over 6 years off between the fourth and fifth books during which time he was run over by a drunk driver and seemed to lose the ability to write. Yes, the once great author’s ability had, frankly, been on the wane for years, but this seemed to be the final nail in its coffin. (Try reading “The Shining” and “Desperation” back to back.) Remember that he claimed he would retire after the last book, “The Dark Tower” was done. This work was supposed to be the last thing he would ever write, and that’s because he was through.
Thus the last three books ultimately feel like the forced work of an artist who couldn’t finish what he had started, and also could not ignore his fan’s demands for a conclusion. I don’t know how much of the original ending he had to scrap; and whether or not he just lost interest, or if he tried to emulate his protagonist and shoot from the hip, but in any case what should be the greatest fictional fantasy series ever written jumped the shark, nuked the fridge, AND had the world being torn apart by telepathic loser nobodies because they’ve been convinced that its the only way they can ever have an impact on world history. (“Hello! Didn’t you just say you were fucking telepathic?!!?”)
I’m sorry, I don’t want to be mean, but he wrote himself into the story. I don’t mean some heroic stand in for himself like many authors do, but the actual Stephen King we all know and love! He’s a character in his own book, and the world’s fate rests on his shoulders!!! No Joke: The Dark Tower series really is the story of the meta-verse that King created in his life’s work.
There are many problems with this, the least of these being that If you aren’t familiar with every King film adaptation, then you won’t get all the references and inside jokes. But more to the point, this kind of writing is one of the first things you learn NOT to do, right? Self-involved people write the worst self-involved crap you can ever read. Community college creative writing courses are just loaded with bad, introspective hacks! Self-obsessed writers give up when they realize their crappy high-school band needs to stick to doing covers, because self-obsessed jerk-off writers got nothing to talk about that anyone wants to hear! In fact, if you don’t ridicule them into submission while they’re young they go on to make crap like M. Knight Sham-hammer’s “Lady in the Water,” right? Am I right?
And I just know they’ll ruin this thing in casting; get Jim Carey to play Roland or something awful. That little shit from Star Wars Episode 1 might not be too old to play Jake now. Can we get him?
Eh, reading back I now see I must have been carrying this anger around inside for years. Thanks for indulging me.
i love this series…but with all of king’s books i could see some elements being hard to bring to the screen. when he writes a large part of his character development comes from inside that characters head and it is never easy to bring to the screen.
ditto for alot of the spiritual battles that he writes that are always very central to the conflict resolution.
It’s an amazing book series, and definitely one that lends itself to a visual interpretation. However, it’s a huge story that may be better suited for an HBO style mini-series than anything else.
Without giving anything away, I think that the nature of the later books in the series would not lend themselves well to film. Not the content, but the presentation.
I think it’s a fascinating idea, a good creative team, and nice to have a series of original films instead of another remake or reboot or retread. I haven’t read the final 2 books, but really enjoyed those that I have read. They encompass so many genres that they could really stand out as unique.
I think it’s a Bad Idea.
To the positive, it’s got potential. It’s a sweeping story of an old West Style Gunslinger searching for a mystic Dark Tower in a world which contains magic, demons, etc. Gunslingers have an almost religious like quality to those around them, though the first book picks up a time where that era is passed and he is the last one; the series is his final quest.
It really is a sweeping epic and truly Kings best work and ultimate idea, in that MANY of the other works he has written relate to, reference, or directly tie in one way or the other to the Dark Tower series. Any King fan will recognize these cues or ideas in each book, though all reference to them are sidestepped / lost in movie translations. You’d probably like them, Doug.
To the negative: While the first 5 books would translate fairly well, the last 2 wouldn’t. The first 4 books were some of the best writings I’ve ever read, the 5th was 1/2 good, 1/2 bad, the 6th could have been left out of the story and probably should have been, and the final book had some good moments but had an ending you either loved or loathed. I hated it, it was anticlimactic, and in my opinion, didn’t live up to the expectation of the series AT ALL.
More importantly, there’s a facet of the later books that wouldn’t translate to the screen AT ALL (spoiler alert) in which King actually writes HIMSELF into book 5 and 6 using his near death accident a few years ago. While it was a moderately interesting twist, it changes the whole scope of the story, destroys any credibility of the characters and killed it for me (end spoiler).
One of those works that’s better to leave it in our imaginations. The only way it would work would be to omit the spoiler mentioned above in it’s entirety, then maybe.
The Dark Tower series is very sci fi, not horror. It deals with doorways to other dimensions and how all the demensions are connected at the Dark Tower and if that is destroyed then everything is destroted. Ive always had a Lost theory that JJ Abrams is plaing off the story of TDT. Like the island is the one constant through a bunch of dimensions. idk. Id see the movies.
The first book is very short and probably wouldn’t be too difficult to condense, but most of the rest of them (especially the last three) are much longer. Part of this is because of King’s really descriptive style and detailed character analysis, but it would still be a feat to cram everything from each book into it’s own movie after the first one. That being said, with Abrams in charge I think it will be hard for this not to be huge.
I’ve only read the first book in the series, though I would like to read the rest.
From what little I know: these are King’s pinnacle work, and they supposedly are the core to his whole universe. Supposedly several (if not all) of his novels and stories are connected through the Dark Tower series. I’ve only heard wonderful things about them.
Personally, after only reading the first one, I would love to see these made into films. I don’t think if they do one film per book that they are too lengthy – in fact, if anything, the first book is too short, with little actual plot and focusing mainly on flashbacks and characterization. With a good writer and director, I think they could turn out great.
I’m not a Stephen King fan (though The Green Mile will always be one of my favorite films). I probably won’t see it, but it could be interesting