The Dark Tower | Circa71

Via: The FireWire

Stephen King, Imagine Entertainment and Weed Road are in discussions to create a movie trilogy initially for the big screen and then follow up with a TV series based on King’s “The Dark Tower” series. Universal Pictures is in talks to distribute.

Ron Howard is slated to direct the script written by Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man and The Da Vinci Code). Howard’s Imagine Entertainment partner Brian Grazer will produce with Goldsman and King.

At the age of 19, Stephen King wrote an epic that incorporated “The Lord of the Rings.” The “Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone” and a poem written by Robert Browning entitled, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”.

The seven book series was written and published separately over a period of 22 years.

The first book entitled “The Gunslinger,” introduces the heroic character Roland Deschain of Gilead as he pursues the “Man in Black” through the mountains that separate the desert from the Western Sea in an apocalyptic world that is similar to our own world.

The series was once developed by J.J. Abrams and his “LOST” team of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse but they realized they wouldn’t be able to do an adaptation justice, and they gave the rights back to King.

Stephen King has always been my favorite author. Mainly because I attribute him to opening my eyes to the world of reading. Reading can be enjoyable, entertaining, educating—ok so you get the point, I’m out of adjectives that start with the letter e anyway. I picked up a copy of the The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger that my mom had laying around the house I was intrigued by the cover artwork.

As I opened the book and read the first line“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” I was immediately hooked and amazed at how fast I blazed through the story. I was finished in two days, a small book mind you, but up to this point I’d only read what was required in high school. But King’s style of writing was something new that I really enjoyed. Next I turned by attention to the Stand and was equally impressed. Thank you Mr. King for helping to open my mind to reading. It’s become a large part of who I am.

Over the years I’ve read King’s whole collection, in addition to many other works by many different authors. I have a collection of first edition Stephen King hardbacks that is only shy four of being complete. But the “The Dark Tower series”, all seven books continues to hold my attention. Several of the early books I’ve read too many times to count. I endured a delay of almost seven years between book three and book four, so I couldn’t be more happy about the possibility of the LOST guys taking on an immense challenge like the Dark Tower. I hope they do Stephen King proud.
Circa71

J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof Will Work On Dark Tower After LOST Is Over
Via: LarryFire 05/01/09

Just as there are whispers in the jungles of “Lost,” there have likewise been whispers in Hollywood that J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof — two of the masterminds behind the ABC television series — have been working on an adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel series “The Dark Tower.” Now, those whispers are getting louder and clearer.

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“Damon Lindelof and I talked to Mr. King,” Abrams told IGN while promoting the upcoming “Star Trek” film. “We got the rights for [‘Dark Tower’] as a film. Damon is obviously still on ‘Lost’ and we’ve been working on ‘Star Trek’ together. As soon as ‘Lost’ is done, hopefully we’ll begin tackling that.”

For his part, Lindelof has also been speaking about the Stephen King adaptation. As “Lost” wraps up its penultimate season and gets ready for the sixth and final year of the show, Lindelof told Lostpedia that his entire creative energy is currently focused solely on the series.

“We’re just so focused on finishing ‘Lost’ that it’s really hard to think about anything else,” he said. “The last thing we want to think about is how to adapt a seven book series of, you know, basically the writer who we admire the most and look up to most and has inspired our work the most, and do anything with that. I think that it’s such a daunting task. We have a pretty daunting task in front of us ourselves [with the end of ‘Lost’].”

Still, it’s not as if the “Lost” showrunner hasn’t spoken about “Dark Tower” in the past. He previously told AMC that he envisions the series on the same scope as Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

“There are always ‘Dark Tower’ conversations, but the figuring out of what this will look like as a movie has not begun,” said Lindelof. “If ‘The Dark Tower’ were in the right hands, I would love to see seven movies executed just right. But you have to get people to see the first one to get them to come and see the second one.”