With The Dark Tower opening in theaters this weekend, moviegoers will be transported to Mid-World on the big screen, but the seminal Stephen King book series is making some progress on the small screen as well, with a showrunner now set.
According to THR, Glen Mazzara (The Walking Dead, Damien) is set to serve as showrunner for The Dark Tower TV series from Media Rights Capital and Sony Pictures Television. The series is currently in the development stages, as it still needs to find a network to call home, but it's expected to comprise 10–13 episodes and filming could begin as early as 2018 if things move forward (The Dark Tower's box office performance could be a factor in whether or not the series comes to fruition).
An "origin story" of sorts, The Dark Tower TV series is expected to include Idris Elba as Roland The Gunslinger, Dennis Haysberg as Roland's father, and Tom Taylor as Jake Chambers. The series, though, would focus more on the fourth book in the Dark Tower series, Wizard and Glass, which follows the story of a young Roland as he begins his journey as a Gunslinger.
Executive producing the series are Akiva Goldsman, Gregory Lessans, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Jeff Pinkner, with The Dark Tower director Nikolaj Arcel and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen working on the script.
Sharing his excitement for adapting Stephen King's source material, here's what Mazzara told THR:
"I’ve been a Stephen King fan for decades and the opportunity to adapt The Dark Tower as a TV series is a great honor. The events of The Gunslinger, Wizard & Glass, The Wind Through the Keyhole, and other tales need a long format to capture the complexity of Roland's coming of age — how he became the Gunslinger, how Walter became the Man in Black, and how their rivalry cost Roland everything and everyone he ever loved. I could not be more excited to tell this story. It feels like being given the key to a treasure chest. And oh yeah, we’ll have billy-bumblers!"
In addition to The Dark Tower series, Mazzara is also developing a series based on Frank Miller's Sin City comic books. Stay tuned to Daily Dead for more updates on both projects. Would you be excited to see a Dark Tower TV series?
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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