After Universal passed at the last moment on Guillermo Del Toro's adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness we were worried that they might get cold feet on the planned adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. According to Variety, Universal is meeting this week to decide on the fate of The Dark Tower adaptation:
"Sources tell Variety that in the past few days, the project, based on Stephen King's sweeping seven-book-and-counting series, has run into budgetary complications that have caused Universal execs to rethink original plans. Insiders expect U brass to meet in coming days to decide whether to put the project into turnaround, whereby producer Imagine Entertainment could shop it to another studio, either to partner with Universal or take over entirely."
Now, don't get up in arms yet. The Variety article also specifically states that "as of Thursday, Universal is moving ahead as if the project is going forward". At best, Universal will officially commit to the project, but we could also see a joint venture between multiple studios or another studio take on the entire project.
For those that missed out on previous news, the plan is for The Dark Tower series to be adapted as a trilogy of films with a TV series running between the movies. Both the TV series and the films would feature the same actors. Ron Howard has planned to direct at least the first film and some of the TV series with Javier Bardem set to play the lead roll. This is obviously a big undertaking for any studio and no one has tried to merge a film series with a TV series before, so we can understand the hesitation. Let's hope that Universal continues to push forward and we'll report back as soon as there is an official update.
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