Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came… Announced today by Deadline Hollywood, Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy have signed on as showrunner and producer respectively, to produce a brand new series set within the sprawling world of Stephen King’s masterpiece.
The Dark Tower is an eight-book series written by horror author Stephen King over the course of his career. Filled with meta references to stories told within the real world as well as many of King’s own stories, The Dark Tower serves as the centerpiece of King’s universe of horror and thriller stories.
The story of The Dark Tower centers around Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger of Gilead and the last descendant of Arthur of Eld, known colloquially as King Arthur Pendragon of Camelot. With a pair of guns forged from the blade Excalibur and passed down from father to son, Roland begins a journey to save the center of all realities, the eponymous Dark Tower.
Joining him on the journey are the young Jake Chambers, a New York kid who was run over by a car and resurrected in Mid-World; Eddie Dean, a junkie with a good heart, and Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker, a paraplegic Black woman who upon suffering a horrific accident as a child, developed multiple personalities. The four, making up what Roland dubs his Ka-tet, journey across Mid-World, discovering Roland’s past as well as fighting the forces of the Man in Black, Randall Flagg/Walter Paddick/Walter O’Dim (he has many names, okay?).
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The story serves as King’s own mythos creation, similar to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Rowling’s Harry Potter, and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. With references to the world of It, The Shining, The Stand, and many other King stories, The Dark Tower truly serves as a nexus for everything King has created.
Bringing The Dark Tower to life
Mike Flanagan, known for directing King adaptations of Doctor Sleep (2019) and Gerald’s Game (2017), serves as showrunner for the Amazon Studios series. Following the commercial failure of The Dark Tower in 2017, Amazon purchased the rights to create a television series based on the characters within The Dark Tower, however, due to the film’s financial failure, the show was scrapped, but Amazon held onto the rights.
Flanagan and Trevor Macy, who both worked on and collaborated on Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, confirmed they were producing the show today, stating they plan on producing as many as five seasons of the show, with two feature-length films set within The Dark Tower mythos.
The question now is…who to play who? Roland was originally portrayed by one of Hollywood’s greatest actors Idris Elba, while Walter Paddick was portrayed by Matthew McConaughey. Both actors received backlash upon their announcements, but each proved worthy enough to carry their respective roles, consistently being named as one of the few saving graces of the 2017 adaptation.
Right now, no actors have signed onto the project, but this writer is personally looking at Norman Reedus as Roland Deschain and Keanu Reeves as Walter Paddick. Both actors have enough experience to play their respective roles, and each are amazing in their own right.
What are your thoughts on this? Are you excited to see a series based on The Dark Tower coming to Prime Video? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow The Illuminerdi on social media to be notified of more news and updates like this in the future!
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SOURCE: Deadline
