f13.net

Universal Lands Stephen King's 'The Dark Tower' And Plans Unprecedented Feature/Network TV Adaptation (http://www.deadline.com/2010/09/universal-lands-stephen-kings-the-dark-tower-and-plans-unprecedented-featurenetwork-tv-adaptation/)


I'm into book 4 right now and was wondering if this would ever get onto the big screen. Hopefully this one happens.

Goldsman's sci-fi/fantasy book adaptations are the two Dan Brown films plus I am Legend and I, Robot. He also co-wrote Batman Forever, then wrote Batman & Robin and Lost in Space. Grazer produces about three films a year, plus television... so he's all over the map. Ron Howard... well. From Splash to Cocoon, from How the Grinch Stole Christmas to A Beautiful Mind.

We'll see. This could go either way.

 :oh_i_see:

Yeah.

I'm not holding my breath. He hasn't written anything that simultaneously felt epic and worked. Plus Howard is a profoundly mixed bag... and also short on successful epics. I think his closest is Far and Away. Yikes.

I'm just not seeing this transferring into TV/movie very well.  They had to mix it up significantly for what parts of the graphic novel they've done so far. 

No talk and all action. 

Akiva Goldsman only succeeds by accident: he is otherwise hardwired to hackery. So no, I wouldn't hold out much hope.

Not to mention the fact that I think this is a really freaking hard property to adapt even for someone talented. Especially once it takes the self-indulgent metafictional turn in the later books, which some people really liked but I have to say I thought fell pretty flat. Figuring out how to do that in a film or miniseries and have it work? Needs a really imaginative approach.

My favorite books ever (I'm one of those that loved the conclusion, so grain of salt and all that)...but how can ths be translated to film?  And then into a TV series?  How many books are the films meant to cover?  Hell, book 4 by itself would need more than one movie to do it any sort of justice. 

I don't see this working.  It doesn't have the draw of something like LOTR, and doesn't have much in the way of cool sci-fi or fantasy action to make up for that problem.

From the article:


Seems pretty well thought out to me and really about the only way it could be done.

This is going to be VERY ambitious and the Movie+TV Series+Movie etc. is quite bizarre and also unheard of (at least with this scope), I think.

I don't know... It's my favourite series ever: I started reading it in 1987 and finished it in 2003; it embraced my childhood, puberty and adulthood. It's basically a dream coming true that could easily turn into a nightmare :P

I really loved the early Dark Tower books.

Wizard and Glass completely killed my interest in the series. Hooray for a prequel in the middle of the series!  :oh_i_see:

That was my favorite of the whole series. Weird.

If they use the Marvel graphic novel adaptations (penned by Jae Lee btw), this will be win.  If they get too cozy with the actual chronicle, fail.

This will fail. Badly.

Akiva Goldman writing it? Strike one.
Ron Howard directing it? Strike two. He's a decent director but this is way out of his league. It just is.
Movie + Series combined? Strike three. The series won't stand on its own and people who don't watch the series will get lost in the trilogy of movies.

This needs to be a series. Flat out. Preferably on a premium channel like HBO. Do a season for each book and you're good to go.

 :ye_gods:

You take that back, you filthy liar!

W & G is probably my favorite single book of all time.  You are a broken, and probably terrible, person.

I loved the first three books (though the second was a cut above the rest of the series, imo) and when W&G came out I tried to read it multiple times and quit somewhere around the 20% mark. 

Finally after a year or so I pushed myself to read the whole thing and realized it was a masterpiece - it was the first of the series where King had really changed, grown up in his writing.  If you never made it through it, push yourself to get past the start.  Because when it starts getting good, it gets really good.

I'm hugging you through the internet right now.  And yes, that is a banana in my pocket.

W & G was the first book that ever brought me to tears.  Ironically, the only other book(s) to ever do it was later in the series

NBC Universal announced the release date of the first movie:

17th May 2013

http://www.stephenking.com/promo/dark_tower_film_and_tv/news_tracker/
--

Actuall W&G was the first one of the series that I ever read. So, it kinda worked out.

I thought it was awesome.

Eh, IMO the first one was the best and it was downhill from there. I never really liked Eddy or the rest of the "secondary" characters.

Ditto. Never got past book four, I thought the monorail train part was so fucking stupid I rage-quit the series.

This morning, while browsing around the Net looking for reactions to the above mentioned announcement, I spotted this interesting bit:

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2010/10/29/when-will-you-get-to-see-the-dark-tower-movie-and-tv-series/

This article mention  another website you might already be familiar with if you are a regular follower of TV series, "Spoiler TV":

http://www.spoilertv.com/2010/10/nbc-full-drama-development-slate-for.html

This other article is dated 27th October 2010 and talks about *next season* projects (Autumn 2011 onwards) and The Dark Tower (TV Series, not the movie) is mentioned in what looks like a "press-release" style blurb.
---

Yes, maybe it's just an error by NBC or Spoiler TV itself, but if you read the original press release about the project, you know that the idea was to release the first movie and then the first part of the TV series.

Maybe they are changing plans?

And, while we are at it, if you read the wholesaga (spoilers, of course!!!), how would you structure the Movie/TV Series project? (for example: first movie=The Gunslinger, then first TV Series about Roland childhood and Wizard and Glass story).

Arise!

Apparently this project is now deceased, according to Deadline.com, and others: http://www.deadline.com/2011/07/universal-wont-scale-stephen-kings-the-dark-tower-studio-declines-to-make-ambitious-trilogy-and-tv-series/ (http://www.deadline.com/2011/07/universal-wont-scale-stephen-kings-the-dark-tower-studio-declines-to-make-ambitious-trilogy-and-tv-series/)

The project always seemed overly ambitious to me. 

I stopped reading the series at book five, but maybe I should finish it.  Also, apparently King is about to release an eighth book.   :oh_i_see:

How long does Universal own the rights?  As long as they own them, yah then we can say it's deceased.  But if they gave them up I find it hard to believe someone wouldnt pick up the I.P.  Especially if something like Cowboys and Aliens does well.


This seems to be the case.  They bit off more than they could chew trying to scale the entire story.  Seriously, they should just work with the comics and either do a 3 hr. epic film or a series ala Firefly.

/iamsad   (more pout-rants later)

After just finishing watching Rango I was thinking Mr. Olyphant would be a good pick for the guy. He's got the voice sure, and he could be olded up a bit while still being young enough to do all the strenuous shit. Poor Clints just too far gone.

Viggo Mortensen

(http://i.imgur.com/7ZTR5Yq.gif)


Yes, looks like it's finally happening. Idris Elba will play Roland (you read it right); Matthew McConaughey will be the Man in Black.

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/02/29/dark-tower-rises-stephen-king-idris-elba-and-matthew-mcconaughey (some tiny spoilers about the saga here and there, and expect more in the comments section if you wanna venture there)

It's a long and somewhat confusing article. For now, it looks like the first movie won't start at the beginning of the saga. Article says there's room for more and King says the possibility of an accompanying TV series is not abandoned.

I don't know why they don't just Game of Thrones this thing. There's no way enough movies get made to justify the full breadth of the story.

Honestly, about 2.5 books worth of it were pretty bad or are unfilmable. 

- Gunslinger, Roland is kind of an asshole and it is a short book.  I love it, but it is pretty divisive.
- Drawing and Wastelands are great.
- Wizard and Glass was a good book, but you aren't going to film a prequel in the middle of your series with all new actors.
- Wolves and Susannah were pretty blah, with some good parts. 
- Final was pretty good, but I'm not sure how much of that is filmable.


I could see a pretty good Trilogy made out of that material.
- Meet Roland, bring in Eddie and the rest.
- Wastelands and some background stuff, train?
- Big battle, events to tower?

The last three books ruined it for me.  You could tell King's heart wasn't in it, and the last book was pretty much a big fuck you to everything that made the series enjoyable, as well as shitting all over Insomnia, Black House and Hearts in Atlantis.  However, the actual ending, after Roland entered the tower, was perfect.

This will have to be brutally trimmed. Stephen King needs to be kept the fuck away from it while they're doing it. It has enormous potential but only if they ignore his failings in the later going. I have in some ways never regretted more a commitment to finish reading a series. Even Wheel of Time was by the fifth book or so captive to its author's naked need for more money and his weird narrative fetishes in a way that was almost monotonous and predictable and therefore curiously tolerable. This is a case of a gymnastic routine that was breathtaking in the beginning and by the end was the kind of landing that involves a compound fracture in one leg.

So, this isn't worth reading? I heard about the movie and figured maybe I'd check the series out since I've liked a bit of King's stuff, but skimming the thread here while trying to avoid spoilers it seems the end is sort of shit.

I liked everything about the entire series except for the part where he puts himself in the book. Sorry no spoiler tag, but there it is. It didn't ruin the series for me, as it is a world in epic, but it really pissed me off at the time.

It's worth reading. The first 2/3 is great, then there's some meh stuff, then at least for me there was some  :ye_gods: :ye_gods: :ye_gods: badness that left me feeling much less positive about the series.

Yep, it's definitely worth reading. The beginning of the saga has an even more weird atmosphere and feeling if you somehow manage to grab a copy of the non-revised first book (but the whole introduction to the series, written by King in the revised edition, gives you some perspective on how bizzare was its development and why King decided to take the story to a certain..."direction" in the last three books). But yeah, "Song of Susannah" was dreadful and I was disappointed about the portrayal of two  characters in the last book (especially THAT crazy one :P).

Yah, it's easily the worst part of the series.  The end was a bit disappointing as well.  Wizard and the Glass is a bit hard to read because you know how it's going to end (but overall its' a good tale if brutal).

I like the series and it's some of my favorite of all of King's works.

Idris as Roland blunts some of the race dynamics between him and Susannah, but they could easily just make that aspect of her less cartoony and more sinister.

If they follow the graphic novels, they'll be fine.  That said, obviously they are mostly not, givin Idris is the lead.

I tried reading the first book and gave up and deliberately left it on a train. So long ago now I can't remember why, but I'll give the movie a shot if it seems well received.

I'd rather a black company movie. The plots there are very filmable by today's superhero standards.

Tom Taylor will play Jake Chambers:
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/03/10/dark-tower-jake-chambers-tom-taylor

(http://www.liljas-library.com/img/other/jakec.jpg)

Not bad, more or less how I pictured him in the books.

That's probably because the first book, despite getting the series off the ground, is probably one of the weakest written books in the series imo. Song of Susannah is by far the absolute worst, so bad that I wished it didn't exist (I loathe Susannah's character and if I could expunge her presence from the novels I would.) The rest of them seem to vary in ranking person to person. In my mind it went:

Wizard and Glass
The Dark Tower
Drawing of Three
Wastelands
Wolves of Calla
The Gunslinger
Song of Susannah

That's probably exactly how I would rank them as well.  Wizard and Glass is one of my favorite books, period. 

I just started a reread of the whole series because I can't remember enough about the books to say which I'd prefer be a movie or not.  But after finishing The Gunslinger - that kid upthread fits my head canon just fine.

Isn't Roland supposed to be a brown person??  Why are the interwebs people getting white-supremacy butthurt that Elba is playing an older version of Roland?  I dont get it.  Did I miss something?  Tbh, I would have preferred a native american actor playing Roland, like LDP or something... but Elba will do nicely. 

Granted, I'm going by the comics... not the novels.  Is he a Clint Eastwood in the novels or something?

In the white man's mind, all badass gunslingers are Clint Eastwood.

Clint Eastwood was one of Stephen King's inspirations for the character, yes. Roland is also stated to share a lot of physical characteristics with Stephen King himself. That said, I think Elba is great casting.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/Thedarktower7.jpg)

He's often referred to as a "honky mofo(sp)" by Detta in the books, which would indicate white.  Honestly, other than that, his skin color means very little.  He's from the Arthurian lineage, but who's to say that line isn't dark skinned in his world. 

The problem with discussing this, of course, is that this is the sort of discussion where it's easy to imply bigotry at anyone who dissents, but I'm going to weigh in and take the chance this will stay civil.

The thing is Detta calling him a "honky mofo" was a major part of the arc of the second book. The unrelenting racism of that personality was the defining characteristic and threat of that relationship -- why Detta couldn't be trusted, made the worse by Rolan's inability to truly understand what her problem was, since he didn't have the shared history, no matter that he looked *exactly* like an archetypal western gunfighter from North American pop culture (yes I know the image mostly comes from films shot in Italy -- it was still US pop culture!).

And the archetypal western gunfighter from North American pop culture is most assuredly Caucasian. Deeply tanned perhaps, but still a honky mofo.

So this means that Detta has to be written out or completely changed (which I admit might be a good thing -- she was pretty grating). Come to think of it, she could be rewritten as white, and still keep the racism, but without said racism it does deeply change the character progression (understanding and eventually overcoming said bigotry -- made the more difficult since the woman was clinically crazy with good old fashioned Hollywood style schizophrenia).

In either case we're talking a beyond Peter Jackson change to a work which has some pretty rabid fans that think it was done perfectly in book form and are going to be pissed at *any* deviation from the novels.

REAL EDIT: I have not read the graphic novels. Is a dark skinned in those, and how do they deal with the handicapped psycho lady in there?

The books also mention pretty frequently how piercing blue Roland's eyes are, and that's not usually a color associated with a black man.  Still wouldn't complain about Idris Elba ever though.  :heart:

Thing is, if you change or get rid of Detta Walker, you're changing a pretty significant part of Susannah's character and how she's presented.  I supposed you could change her to a white woman, but OTOH, considering the differences in culture, "honky mofo" could be a default insult for Detta to use against anyone who acts "white" or with authority.

Yah, I have to take everything back (now that I've gone back through the graphic novels).  He's most definitely a black-haired caucasian with blue eyes.  It was Algood that was moreso an brownskinned native american type.  

So indeed, they are departing from the racial overtones of the books.  By creating racial overtones.  :uhrr:   How will they navigate the bloodlines and so forth?

We've had white people in hollywood play other races for years. I could care less that they are going the other way.

That said, yes he's white on the covers of books and as described in the novels. I still care none. In fact, I think having him as a black character would add more gravitas to some of the isolation he feels in his quest from the rest of the world.

It's Idris Elba, not Will Smith. One of those instantly makes any movie he's in better, the other is Will Smith.

Yeah, I am not a big fan of affirmative action in casting, but Idris Elba is a fantastic actor, capable of carrying any role. Maybe the racism angle of the story will have to be dropped or tweaked, but it's hard to see how any movie could be harmed by casting him as the lead.

Pretty sure that he could take the lead role in a biopic about Strom Thurmond and make it work.

--Dave

Hile, Gunslinger.

(http://www.objetivocine.es/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/la-torre-oscura-idris-elba1.jpg)

----

As you might already know, yesterday Stephen King tweeted a VERY intriguing, VERY SPOILER-ish image and phrase (I'll only post the link):

https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/733244613000069120

That shows a degree of clever that I must admit I was not expecting.

Wow. Okay. Suddenly, I'm looking forward to this production.

Yeah, that tweet was like "Yes, I am interested in your product and would like further information".

They can also get around the maimed hand now, too. 

That tweet makes things really intriguing now and means that while the events in the books take place, they can make enough minor changes to the story to justify them since it's the next iteration.  Well played.

Maybe I am being thick, but is the implication from the tweet supposed to be that if Roland has the horn, then this is actually a totally new cycle and therefore whatever we read in the books is part of a former cycle?  All rules are off?  I say this because of some vague recollection that the horn was supposed to have shattered in the books...though maybe he woke up again at the end, it was whole again?   Do I remember wrongly?

I think it was that Roland should have picked up the horn after Cuthbert dropped it during the battle of Jericho Hill, but he didn't in the books. This time around, he's got the horn with him so presumably, it will be the last iteration he'll have to do and the cycle will end when he reaches the Dark Tower.

Let's hope the developers remembered to mark it as an unlosable, unbreakable, [Legendary] Quest Item, this time around  :why_so_serious:

Yes. It makes the movie a sequel to the books, and not an adaptation. Like I said, really a brilliant move. I wonder who came up with it, King or a writer/producer?

I wouldn't say necessarily the last, but that's just my book understanding. Having the horn was basically an indication that it wasn't identical loops, over and over, but that there was progress each time (each time the universe was repaired a bit more).

So the next loop he'll do better. Refine the loop a bit more, you know? (The basic idea being he can't ever finish until he stops doing stupid shit, like dropping Jake).

Spoiler about the last book:

In the movie thread and not book I know, but it got me thinking about it.

I read the first Dark Tower book, didn't like it or think it was anything special.  Should I keep going or will I likely not care for the series if I didn't enjoy the first book?

First book isn't very strong and the writing, IMO, isn't particularly good.  The middle part of the series is the best with the quality tapering off during some of the later plot lines. 

Books 2, 3 and 4 are very good, and so are the connected novels Insomnia and Black House, but 5-7 are just awful.  The very ending of the last book, after King warns readers to stop reading, is worth reading, though.

It's funny how differently we all relate to the series. For myself, the first book was quite good, if sparingly told. The Drawing of the Three had some very good parts, and some very bad writing. The Waste Lands were WTF WTF WTF all strung together -- but told well. Wizard and Glass, damn good. Wolves of the Calla rambles, a lot. Song of Susannah picks the pace back up and I liked a lot of the things there that some hated. The Dark Tower finally gets to the, well, Dark Tower, but I wasn't that happy with the journey's "end."

Insomnia I hated, Black House I thought pretty good.

I had no idea Through the Keyhole existed until just now looking at a list of the books on Wikipedia. Guess I got some readin' to do.

It really just boils down to do you like King's prose style or not? If you do then boy does The Dark Tower series have a lot of it! If you don't, well, there is a lot you're going to have to slog through to get to the end -- you might want to consider the graphic novels. I hear they are pretty good.

Final note, for good or bad, The Dark Tower is King's Middle Earth. He admits to being obsessed with it in much the same way as Tolkien was obsessed with his creation, even when he wanted to be working on other projects something about the mythic cycle kept bringing him back. This can make for a compelling read, or bore you to tears.

Sometimes in the same book.

Never really was a fan of Kings prose to be honest, though I loved the Eyes of the Dragon. I read the First book in this when I was a teenager and I thought it was pretty meh. So probably the Graphic novels for me, though I spent some time reading the Wiki today.

As for Edris Elba, they could probably make that woman character Asian or something and keep the same racial overtones. Racism isn't just whites hating everyone.

I thought Gunslinger was very good, and I couldn't get past the Detta part of Drawing of the Three. IDK. I just stopped there twice when trying many years apart.

I like world books. And movies for that matter. So stuff that bores most folks does fine by me. I loved this whole series, but previous sentence explains why.

If you haven't read the Keyhole book, do it. It's excellent.

Trailer 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjwfqXTebIY

I'm torn on this one. The cast looks amazing but there's something off about the theme. The books made everything seem gritty and grim. This is clean.

Be interesting to see how they handle the story -- specifically how far they go and what they count as an "ending".. I know it's "the next time around", as it were. And I think the TV series they're talking about is Wizard's and Glass.

I'd bet they end the movie at the beach (possibly without losing Jake this time). It's a good ending point. The man in black is (sorta) defeated, there whole point of the Tower and the series is that the battle never ends, but you can win victories, etc.

As for the trailer -- liked the other reloading trick (him just thumbing the bullets in -- the CGI looked fairly good there), and really liked the long bullet shot at the end. Kind of shows off the fact that gunslingers are superhumanly good.

That was interesting, but it seems like they really are diverging from the basic storyline a lot. That could work with the whole "this has happened before, and will happen again" theme, but not sure.  It looks like there's too much New York in it; I don't remember Roland getting there nearly so early, and worry they're doing it to have an urban setting more than a dystopia one from Roland's world.

Still, Idris Elba..  :heart:

Ditto.

Trailer doesn't look terrible.

I mostly like King's early work.  His later work seemed pretty uneven, and not really rewarding to read.  c.f. The Tommyknockers.   :oh_i_see:  I did read the Dark Tower books up to the point where he stopped for... a decade?  And never really picked them back up when he returned to the project.

I did enjoy Eyes of the Dragon.  I wonder if it holds up.

Zero fucking interest in this.  And then Katheryn Winnick appears.

I'm really not getting clean from that trailer. Bit more of it from Jake's perspective than the books, might be why it appears that way.

I thought TDT was a western, not some generic SF claptrap?

How kid centric is this story? never read it, the heavy involvement of a kid in the trailer is the only thing that didn't look awesome.

The whole trailer feels paint by numbers, I'm predicting a pretty shit movie.

Yeah, but you thought it was a western, so, yeah.

I liked the trailer, and if it is indeed the beginning of another cycle, I'll go with it.

This trailer didn't fill me with hope. I hate the cheesy "toss cylinder in the air, reload gun by slapping it in mid-air" bs. It also looks like it is diverging way to much from the books for my taste. Sure, this is another time around but it doesn't even really feel like the books.

Fair enough.  Only read bits of the first book, I assumed the thematic sense would continue even in different trappings.

Listen.  He did a lot of cocaine, then was in an accident, and now he's gone back and rewritten parts of the first book to make it consistent with the rest of it.

No idea about the movie, but the kid is pretty central to the Gunslinger's character arc in the books.

I know and was intrigued by the particular approach King and the producers are taking with this (and the fact they're supposedly starting "in the middle"), but this trailer is too flashy and almost killed any interest I had.

Fuck.

To give you an idea of some of the talent involved here, one of the four credited writers wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for Batman & Robin, Lost in Space, I Am Legend, Insurgent, and Rings. Another one is one of a half-dozen writers that had a hand in The Amazing Spider-man 2, co-wrote the upcoming Jumanji movie, and has apparently been tasked with writing the ROM, M.A.S.K., and Visionaries movies, as well as the Venom movie. The director is from Denmark and from what I can tell, this appears to be his first English language movie. He's also one of the writers on this.

Wow.  That's like a litany of utter suck.

I didn't like that trailer. I'm a big fan of the series, to the point where I can excuse how bad some of the last books are, but that didn't hit any of the notes was hoping for.

It seems to be a big departure from the original Jake character and The Man in Black as well.  Oh well, here's hoping it doesn't actually suck.

It's been a while since I've seen the books and other than some nice imagery (the gun-fu-magic and the Tower), I can't reliably say it resembled the books I read. Like at all. I'll chalk part of that up to my failing old man memory but fuck's sake, it didn't look anything like I pictured it.

Yeah, no matter the "sequel" idea or anything else, the trailer doesn't really convey the atmosphere of the books, at all (although, yes, that particular segment of the book supposedly portrayed in the first movie is quite frantic compared to other storylines).

Yeah, maybe I should just rewatch Sergio Leone's movies to get some of that (at least up to Book 2) but, just to make a relatively recent example, "The Fellowship of the Ring", with its slow pace and narration, recreated the mood of the book perfectly, IMO (hell, we could notice that even since the very first trailer of FOTR).

All they had to do was "Gunslinger Born" and they'd have a Logan style classic.  Why make the damned thing more complex than that?  Didn't like this concept (but I haven't gotten far at all in the series myself).

There's been a bit of Dark Tower mention in the Useless Movies thread, which has reminded me after seeing the latest trailer that I need to cautiously rescind my cautious optimism. The trailer looks exciting, but what it shows deviates so far from the books that it might as well just be another intellectual property altogether, reboot or no.

It might be perfectly worth seeing, as long as you don't mind the entire overarching plot of the books being replaced by something else.

If Elba brings the Gunslinger, and Macconnahughey pulls a decently sinister Man in Black, I'll be fine with it being a sidestory like Wind thru the Keyhole or whatever it was. Frankly, I think I'd be disappointed if they tried to follow the books, because I know they would fall short.

We already knew that this was going to be the next cycle of Roland and the Dark Tower didn't we? I figure that if it flops it'll be because 90% of the audience won't know the backstory.

I am 100% baffled at why Hollywood hires Akiva Goldsman so often. His movies often underperform, usually to the point that the intellectual property they were trying to develop loses most of its value. He's like an anti-Midas, but he's constantly employed.

It's because they think he's that dude from The Lonely Island.

I think it's the opposite. Knowing the backstory will be an impediment, not a benefit here. As far as I can tell, they are taking three elements from the books (Gunslinger as a Fantasy Chivalrous Knight analogue --but with guns instead of swords, a kid from our world, and The Man in Black). Again, as far as I can tell the relationship between them is totally rewritten, as is the way and means that the Man in Black is a threat and "Must Be Stopped(tm)."

It's not quite Lawnmower Man, but it might come close.

And again again, I'm basing this off a trailer that I was actually trying not to watch, and the final movie might be totally entertaining, but it sure as hell doesn't look like the epic saga that King envisioned.

I saw the trailer a week ago in the theater and thought 'that looks like it could be a good movie but not necessarily a good Dark Tower movie'.  Didn't this idea start out as a TV series?  I would have preferred that, would have let them follow the IP better.

Yeah, this IP would have rocked given the Westworld or Game of Thrones treatment, or even Netflix's MCU. Easily enough material to cover five or more seasons -- damn, now I'm missing that it probably won't be.

But who knows? If the movie does well I could see HBO or one of the others taking it up for the future.

They could just follow the dumb meta from the later books and have King show up in the last part of the movie and say, "I hate this version a lot, I'm going to remake it" and then everyone dies and the movie ends. Could explain the short running time.

https://twitter.com/mikeryan/status/892943514346151936

There is a TV series still in the works (for now).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_%282017_film%29#Follow-up_TV_series

Given the reviews I'd wager that's gonna get shelved.

Really don't know why they just didn't pitch it to HBO, Starz, or who ever to do a long running high budget series, which have been all the rage the last decade........

I've seen much worse movies, and probably even a few that came out this year if I were to spend the time thinking about it. That said it was a mess and would probably be almost meaningless to anybody who isn't familiar with the story. Even having read all the books, it's not a good movie.

I think they tried and Ron Howard was attached to that very concept for a while. They would release two bookend movies sandwiched around a TV series. For some reason, that got shitcanned, probably because no one wanted to commit that much money behind it over that long a haul.

They might nowadays, becasue Game of Thrones is folding and suddenly everyone will be desperate to get the Fantasy Arc demo to watch THEIR channel. They will have to find some way to add Tits though. Its a bit like after B5 every Sci Fi show pretended to have an overall story arc for a while.

They're still planning on doing a TV series (http://www.comingsoon.net/tv/news/876377-the-walking-deads-glen-mazzara-to-showrun-the-dark-tower-tv-series#/slide/1) but are looking for a cable channel to partner with. The box office numbers probably aren't going to make that a particularly tempting prospect.

I went to see this today and the theater was almost empty.  This isn't going to end well.

Box office mojo is saying it's probably going to open at around $18-19 million for the weekend on a $60 million budget. I'm thinking this is going to be a HUGE bomb.

It's too bad because I REALLY like Idris Elba and would like to see him in...everything.  I was disappointed when I heard Danial Craig was coming back as James Bond only because it meant Elba wouldn't be playing the character. :heartbreak:

A 60 million budget almost guarantees it will do well with overseas viewers, I'm surprised it was that low.

I was a bit shocked myself, considering the stars in it, but yeah, it'll probably break even with overseas. It'll still be considered a flop though. And I'm assuming that such a small budget is why it's only 95 minutes.

It's a deeply mediocre movie. It's just "there." Everything is telegraphed, nothing is remarkable. The performances are all adequate. The jokes are all mildly amusing. If it comes on cable, you watch it because it's on. You get the idea.

Sorry, my bar for watching something just because it's on is Shawshank Redemption.

That's a really low bar.

wat

It's way too long and not something I'd watch just because it was on? For me it would be a low bar - there are many many things I'd rather watch if I saw they were on TV.

My bar is Zoolander, but it is more of a shame guide than a bar, if I am watching a movie and think hmm I would rather be watching Zoolander then I feel embarrassed that I am actually watching whatever it is, I usually don't turn it off though.

Jaws and Shawshank are the bar....