Stephen King’s Greatest Achievement In Development From The Best Horror Director Today
After tackling the summer cinema season with The Boogeyman, and with the Pet Sematary prequel – Pet Sematary: Bloodlines on the way, Stephen King is already off to another great year. What’s even better for fans of the legendary writer’s work is that The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass helmer, Mike Flanagan, says that an adaptation of The Dark Tower is still in the works. Speaking on an episode of Fangoria’s podcast, The Kingcast, Flanagan gave hope to fans who have long been awaiting more news surrounding his vision for the book-turned-series.
Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is still in the works, and the director promises that it’s his number one priority once the strikes end.
With nothing but positivity to share with his following, Flanagan said of his Stephen King adaptation that he was feeling “really good about where we are.” Like many other projects in Hollywood, The Dark Tower has also shuttered its production as the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes rage on but the Absentia director said that the team had already made plenty of leeway during the spring, adding that they had made “enormous progress” over the last few months.
With no other irons in the fire at this point, aside from The Fall of the House of Usher, which is in post-production and due out in the fall, Flanagan said that The Dark Tower would be “priority #1” after the studios and unions come to an agreement.
Known for working alongside well-known and celebrated names in the past, Flanagan teased that this project would be no different, commenting that there were some “great partners” helping him with the title and that “some really exciting actors” were already in talks for it. Beyond that, he kept his cards close to his chest, saying several times that he was unable to talk about things in detail.
“I feel really good about where we are. Oddly, where we are at the moment is completely frozen, because of the strike, but we had a wonderful spring with it and we’re making enormous progress on it. And I have every reason to believe that on the other side of the strike, it’s gonna be priority #1.”
Mike Flanagan
Another bit that Flanagan teased about his Stephen King adaptation was that The Dark Tower would be pulling out all the stops when it comes to how it’s shot, vaguely mentioning some “groundbreaking approaches to filmmaking” that he was really looking forward to pursuing.
While he kept his comments mostly tight-lipped when it came to the question of who would be involved in bringing Stephen King’s beloved horror novel to life, Flanagan was able to assure fans that The Dark Tower was on the way and that any “fears” that he had surrounding the project going dead in the water due to the strike were completely gone.
To round out his talk on the podcast, Flanagan reiterated that he and the rest of the gang were standing “in solidarity with the WGA and SAG,” and completely supporting the movement. Giving one last bit of hope to fans, Flanagan rounded out his interview by promising to get directly back to work when an agreement had been reached.
We have great partners on it that I can’t talk about, and we’ve got some really exciting actors circling on it that I can’t talk about, and we have some potentially groundbreaking approaches to the filmmaking of it that I just can’t really talk about … but what I can say is that my fears that any momentum we had developed was gonna be obliterated [by the strike], well, I don’t really worry about that.“
Mike Flanagan
It will be interesting to see how Flanagan adapts Stephen King’s eight-novel series into an on-screen production, bringing fans the story that they’ve come to know and love over – hopefully – a handful of seasons.
The story previously received a big screen production via Sony in 2017 in a film led by Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey which was widely panned by critics. With so many titles under the director, writer and producer’s belt, there’s no doubt that Flanagan is the correct choice to bring The Dark Tower to series form.
