All things considered, it’s been a pretty good year for Stephen King. It released to strong reviews and went on to become the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time and the Netflix adaptation of Gerald’s Game holds a 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite all the hits, there’s one black mark on King’s 2017 record and that’s The Dark Tower.
Despite containing some stellar talent, such as Idris Elba as Roland, the last Gunslinger, and Matthew McConaughey taking on the iconic role of Randall Flag, the film met with poor reviews and a weak box office showing. Fans of King’s 8-novel epic were disappointed both by the movie itself and the fact that the planned series is currently in limbo. However, not all hope is lost as King himself has announced that the planned TV series will be a complete reboot.
King also gave his thoughts on what the movie did wrong though he stressed that he personally enjoyed it.
“The major challenge was to do a film based on a series of books that’s really long, about 3,000 pages,” King told Vulture. “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. 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.”
King’s comments regarding a complete reboot do contradict news that was reported earlier this year in which it was stated that the TV show and movie will exist within the same universe. Then again, given the fact that The Dark Tower itself is a story about the multiverse and different realities, perhaps both things could be true. It was initially reported that Elba would be reprising his role as Roland, but it remains to be seen whether or not this is still the case.
The Dark Tower currently does not have a release date, but it is expected to premiere some time next year.
