Director and screenwriter Mike Flanagan confirmed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that his adaptation of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" cycle is still in active development. According to the director, work on the large-scale project continues, although it is moving "at the speed of a tanker."
"The development has taken on truly epic proportions. It has taken much longer than I would have liked, but I am constantly working on the project. The movement has never stopped, it's just moving at the speed of an oil tanker."
One of the main difficulties Flanagan cited was legal issues related to the scale of the universe and the rights to its characters:
"To do everything the way I want it to be done requires enormous support from the studio. The 'Dark Tower' universe is connected to many works, and the rights to its characters are distributed among different companies."
Flanagan began developing the adaptation while working with Netflix and had been working on it for about a year and a half before the public announcement. The move to Amazon MGM Studios, for which the director created a series based on "Carrie," did not simplify the situation: he acquired the rights to "The Dark Tower" separately from the agreement with the streaming platform.
The "Dark Tower" epic consists of eight novels and tells the story of Roland Deschain, a gunslinger who journeys to the Tower — the center of all worlds. The previous attempt to adapt the cycle, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, was released in 2017 and failed at the box office. This time, the scope matches the original source material: Flanagan plans to begin the adaptation with five seasons of a series and conclude the story with two feature films.