Frank Darabont, the author of Stephen King's three most famous adaptations — \"The Shawshank Redemption,\" \"The Green Mile,\" and \"The Mist,\" — explained why he never took on \"The Dark Tower.\" In an interview with IndieWire, the director refuted long-standing rumors, emphasizing that it was not King who rejected his candidacy, but rather he himself who refused the writer's offer.
According to Darabont, King personally invited him to adapt the saga, but the director realized that he simply could not withstand such a marathon.
\"Actually, I can clarify this. I was the one who turned Steve down back then. He called me once — not the only time, I must say — and asked if I wanted to adapt ‘The Dark Tower.’ It was a great honor for me, I was very flattered. But, damn, most of the story takes place inside the characters, in their thoughts and heads. And the story itself is huge, endless. I thought: God, this could be the next ten years of my life, and I might not be able to handle it, because adapting it is a hellishly difficult task. By that point, I was, to be honest, just burned out.\"
Darabont added that later, after regaining his strength, he tried to return to the conversation about the project, but by that time King had transferred the rights to another director.
\"A couple of years later, when we were talking again, I asked: ‘So what’s up with ‘The Dark Tower’? I might have changed my mind.’ And he replied: ‘No, someone else is already working on it.’ So, perhaps, that’s where this ‘he refused me’ came from.\"
As a result, \"The Dark Tower\" only reached the screens in 2017 in the form of Nikolaj Arcel's film starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. The film was a failure with critics and audiences, scoring only 16% \"freshness\" from critics and 44% from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes.
Now the story should get a second life thanks to director Mike Flanagan, who is working on a large-scale \"dream project\" in the format of a series of five seasons, which should be followed by two feature films.
According to the latest information, the plans are exactly like that. However, Flanagan emphasized that they may change, since the project is too large, and the presence of some characters is complicated by legal nuances: not all characters are available to Amazon, with which he is creating the series, part of the rights belongs to Warner Bros.
So far, Flanagan's series does not even have an approximate release date.