Summary

With another, more hopeful adaptation of Stephen King’sThe Dark Towerin development as a TV series,the accomplished director behind the upcoming live-action reboot has gone on the record to reveal the surprising secret to his past and future success with King’s work.

Mike Flanagan has had a special relationship with adapting and developing works by famous authors, most notablyStephen King. Flanagan has brought two projects by King to the big screen with 2017’sGerald’s Gameand 2019’sDoctor Sleep,both of which the original author and fans of the books applauded greatly. Flanagan was also set to helm an adaptation of King’sRevivalbut had the project canceled after it was announced. This was a major disappointment for King and Flanagan, who bemoaned the missed opportunity to collaborate again. As such, it came as little surprise thatFlanagan was working on a TV series based on Stephen King’sThe Dark Towerin 2022,a book series that the renowned author himself calls his own magnum opus amidst a vast catalog of award-winning works.

Since that announcement,Flanagan has worked on an adaptation of King’s novellaThe Life of Chuckto fully solidify his position as the preeminent choice for King adaptations. At a recent appearance as a guest on New York ComicCon’s panel on his Edgar Allan Poe-adapted seriesFall of the House of Usher, Flanagan was asked how he had managed to capture the massive scope ofThe Dark Tower, a work that acts as a nexus point for several others in King’s massive catalog, andPopversewas on hand to report. “These are the questions that keep me up at night,” Flanagan remarked before giving a succinct version of his answer to the crowd. “I think the only way to do it is, you just do the books.” The director then goes on to explain in detail how King’s masterwork comes together on the page and could come together on-screen.

The thing about The Dark Tower that’s so incredible is that Stephen King builds an astonishing universe that’s huge and is populated by such a richness of characters and scale… eventually. But he starts that story with one person following another person in a barren desert. It’s one of the greatest opening lines to a novel of all time. And that’s how you do it. You start with two people in that simple story. One is trying to catch the other; that’s it. And everything else is gradually added to it. That’s how you do The Dark Tower; you build it one brick at a time. I understand the gravity of it has pulled people into, ‘Oh, let’s jump in at the middle,’ or we try to jump ahead to show the scale of this thing. But you can’t start with that.

The Dark Toweris a notoriously sprawling piece of workand has proven too much for more than one enterprise over the years since the book became a bestseller. The one adaptation that did make it to the finish line, 2017’s loosely adaptedThe Dark Tower,was critically panned and rejected by both fans of the books and newcomers to the franchise. Worse yet was the planned Amazon series, which was intended to be a separate entity from the film and present a far more faithful adaptation, only to fail at the starting line. Of the many reasons that this and other attempts failed was a lack of understanding as to the best way to present the story. However, Flanagan seems to think he’s got the secret formula needed to make it work. “Fortunately,” he opines at the end of his response, “Stephen King is a master storyteller who has constructed a magnum opus, an epic that begins very intimately and ends very intimately, even though it is set in this gigantic world. I think that’s how you get into it. So that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Flanagan’s record on adapting King’s work is already pretty interesting as it stands, especially with King’s endorsement flying in the face of many famous authors’ hatred for adaptations of their work. Now, the accomplished filmmaker has a chance to prove just how potent his combination of competent filmmaking and respect for the source material can be. IfThe Dark Towercan live up to the lofty potential that the book series contains, then there areeven more Stephen King adaptations that Flanagan could and should take on, and there’ll be no doubt then that he’ll do the work justice.

Mike Flanagan’sThe Dark Towerseries is currently in development and has no production timeline.