Dark Tower Ain’t Looking So Hot
Fri, May 6, 2011 
If making three Lord of the Rings movies with a massive budget, done entirely in New Zealand with an acclaimed filmmaker known for no-budget cult fare at the helm and a cast filled with character-actors and unknowns is understandably considered a risk (and that was a widely-known and beloved book trilogy), then Universal and Ron Howard's intentions for The Dark Tower could be deemed down-right suicidal.
Doing a film trilogy and two limited-run television series from the Stephen King books was always too ambitious of a plan for my money, and the studio is starting to get cold feet reports Variety.
Word is executives are expected to meet in the next couple of days to make a call: either stay the course and continue on their original plans, keep the property there but make drastic calls like possibly killing the television component or just making one movie or throw it into turnaround (aka kill it, and let the filmmakers/production company, this in case Howard and partner Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment, take it elsewhere to other hopeful buyers).
Let's put it this way, when a "safe bet" for Universal is making a Jason Bourne movie with the character's name flashed all over the title but he’s not actually in it, then you know where something like Dark Tower stands there. My guess is they let it go, and in the event of a rival studio grabs it ASAP, their game plan gets changed big time.
Reader Comments (2)
Damn, I was hoping this gets made. I won't be crossing my fingers for this to pull through though. I don't blame a studio for not wanting to drop the amount of cash this would cost.
I like the writing structure of your blog and it does a pretty decent job of presenting the material. wwgpto wwgpto - red bottom.