Stephen King's Dark Tower TV Series Would Be A Complete Reboot

Although the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King's classic novel It has become one of the most successful movies of the year, 2017's other high profile King adaptation--The Dark Tower--did not fair so well. The movie was met by largely negative reviews and an underwhelming box office, putting into doubt plans to make further movies and a TV spinoff. Now King himself has weighed in on the film's failure and what the franchise might look like if it comes to TV.

In an interview with Vulture, King explained that much of the problem was the challenge of distilling his epic ten-part series of novels into one movie. "The major challenge was to do a film based on a series of books that's really long, about 3,000 pages," he said. "The other part of it was the decision to do a PG-13 feature adaptation of books that are extremely violent and deal with violent behaviour in a fairly graphic way."

Nevertheless, the writer is happy with the end result, stating: "I've gotta say, I thought [screenwriter] Akiva Goldsman did a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie."

As for the TV version of the The Dark Tower that is currently in development, King revealed that if it happens, it would in fact be a "complete reboot" of the fantasy property, rather than a continuation of the story started in the movie. "The TV series they’re developing now ... we'll see what happens with that," the author says. "It would be like a complete reboot, so we'll just have to see."

In August, it was reported that former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara will oversee the development of the Dark Tower TV show. The series will be a joint-production between Sony Television and the independent studio MRC, and it is expected that a first season would be 10-13 episodes long.