“The Dark Tower” adaptation will be epic film/TV crossover

Stephen King’s novel series The Dark Tower will be adapted into both a network television series and a motion picture trilogy. Both of these projects will be creatively driven by the team behind A Beautiful Mind: Akiva Goldsman and Ron Howard. Goldsman and Howard will be directing and writing the first feature and season of the television series, respectively. Brian Grazer, Howard’s business partner from Imagine Entertainment, will produce.

The Dark Tower focuses on Roland Deschain, the last of a knightly order of gunslingers who is the last hope for human civilization. According to Goldsman and Howard, the world in this story is “an alternate Americana, one part post-apocalyptic, one part Sergio Leone.”

Howard has compared this upcoming project to Peter Jackson’s three Lord of the Rings films:

“What Peter did was a feat, cinematic history. The approach we’re taking also stands on its own, but it’s driven by the material. I love both, and like what’s going on in TV. With this story, if you dedicated to one medium or another, there’s the horrible risk of cheating material. The scope and scale call for a big screen budget. But if you committed only to films, you’d deny the audience the intimacy and nuance of some of these characters and a lot of cool twists and turns that make for jaw-dropping, compelling television. We’ve put some real time and deep thought into this, and a lot of conversations and analysis from a business standpoint, to get people to believe in this and take this leap with us. I hope audiences respond to it in a way that compels us to keep going after the first year or two of work. It’s fresh territory for me, as a filmmaker.”

Here’s what Goldsman had to say about the project:

"We will certainly be looking to maximize both creative and fiscal opportunities by creating one enterprise that encompasses TV and movies. Some of the shooting will likely encompass both platforms, and that has never been done before. It's thrilling, we feel like kids in a candy story."

Don’t worry about any scheduling conflict with Howard, as he should have plenty of time to focus on the upcoming project of epic proportions:

“I’m finishing ‘The Dilemma’ [the comedy starring Kevin James, Winona Ryder, and Vince Vaughn], and then I don’t have anything scheduled and I plan to work hard on this with Akiva and Brian. We will refine our take on the feature and TV shows. We have a clear view of what we want to do, and we’re lucky to have a company with the nerve to back us up on this venture.”

The plan is that the project will start with the first film in the series, followed by a string of television episodes segueing into the second film, another TV series and a final film.

Since this project will be the talk of the town for quite awhile, expect casting announcements to be made in the near future. It will be interesting to see which actors are willing to commit their lives to a three-film two-TV series deal. With a great team and amazingly calculated multimedia plan behind it, “Dark Tower” will easily be one of the most ambitious projects in media history.