Stephen King’s Dark Tower books get the perfect person to adapt the series

Stephen King’s seven-book epic fantasy series The Dark Tower is slowly turning into one of Hollywood’s White Whales. While there have been a number of attempts to mount the story in a series or TV show, none has succeeded, even the theatrical one. It seems that a brand new effort, led by Mike Flanagan (horror-auteur, former Netflix star), might be the most successful. This is largely because Flanagan had been working for this moment for many years.

As with previous efforts to make a Dark Tower series successful, this would be a mixture of movies and TV. Flanagan claims that his version will consist of five seasons on TV and two feature films.

Flanagan’s passion for the series is one thing, but what might be even more impressive is the specificity of his resume and how well it sets him up for the project. Flanagan began his film career directing films like Oculus, HushPlease see the following: Ouija: Origins of EvilBefore moving on to TV, he made shows such as Haunting of Hill House Midnight Mass. Flanagan also loves Stephen King and has adapt some of his works into movies. With a career this varied, it’s like Flanagan was always making his way to The Dark Tower.

Whether or not he designed his career that way on purpose, we know for a fact adapting The Dark Tower has always been Flanagan’s aim. In the interview with Deadline where Flanagan announces the project, he calls it his “Holy Grail”. And in a previous interview with IGN, he discussed how he would adapt the series, including trying to “ground” some of the more difficult and meta elements of the novels.

Mike Flanagan stands in front of a wooden house with antlers and a lifesaver on it. He leans against the railing.

Photo: Eike Schroter/Netflix

It’s not shocking to hear Flanagan would aim to ground The Dark Tower rather than leaning into its weirder elements; After all, grounded tends to be his preferred mode, whether he’s dealing with vampires, ghosts, or sibling rivalries. And while that may be a little disappointing to Dark Tower fans, who tend to enjoy even the weirdest parts of the series — which we won’t spoil here — it’s also probably a necessary evil of getting such a ridiculous and expensive project off the ground. And to Flanagan’s credit, he has plenty of work that suggests he could make a fantastic Dark Tower series.

Perhaps his best work to date is the director’s cut of King’s Shining sequel novel, Doctor Sleep. While the book is an uneven and odd entry in King’s expansive fiction, never quite figuring out its own universe and stubbornly refusing to take even the slightest influence from Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1980s movie adaptation, Flanagan’s adaptation is a work of supreme alchemy.

He combines both the character and feeling of Kubrick’s masterpiece while pulling elements of the story that were more critical to King, like exploring Jack’s alcoholism as a direct parallel to the Overlook’s persuasive and deadly power. Flanagan pulls the alcoholism theme through Jack’s family tree down to Danny (played marvelously by Ewan McGregor, in his best performance ever) and drags the psychic adult back to Kubrick’s vision of the Overlook Hotel.

While making Kubrick and King’s stories work together isn’t exactly the same as adapting an epic fantasy series, this process of combining King’s work and finding ways for his various characters and universes to fold in on each other and match is one of the things that makes the Dark Tower great. On top of that, Flanagan’s penchant for complex character interactions and excellent dialog should be perfect for writing the Ka-Tet’s more intimate moments, as the small band of adventurers travel across the worlds.

Of course, none of this is to say Flanagan’s Dark Tower project will definitely be great, or even that it will happen at all. But if anyone has a chance to pull through with this complicated amalgamation of movies and TV series, and actually make it good, it’s probably Mike Flanagan.

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