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The Dark Tower May Be Closed for Business


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?Well, shit. From the AV Club:

…In perhaps the most obvious omen that the mood at Universal has shifted, Variety reports that the studio is now considering abandoning Ron Howard’s ambitious adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower
novels, a massive, massively expensive project that was supposed to
encompass three films and two TV series over the course of the next
decade.

Which is not surprising: Devoting the next several years to telling a
single story across two different platforms is a huge gamble, one that
could blow up in their face should audiences not immediately embrace the
first film–and with Howard and Akiva Goldsman in charge, it’s never
been a sure thing that even Dark Tower diehards would flock to it.

And from the AV Club slightly later:

Deadline now reports that the Dark Tower pre-production
staff have been asked to stop working, and that all plans for a
September start date have been canceled. The studio officially still
insists that the project is a go, however, although it’s looking
increasingly likely that it will have to find another studio to share
the burden, with Warner Bros. named as the likeliest candidate, or just
hand it over to someone else altogether. (Or scrap it entirely.)

I can’t imagine what studio would want to help fund a massive, multi-year project based on Stephen King books (never a sure bet in terms of box office), so I’m going to bet it ends up scrapped. I can’t really begrudge Universal for getting cold feet, because the movie and TV series and more movies project always sounded insane. What I don’t understand is why they greenlit it in the first place. The idea was just as crazy in the beginning, and absolutely nothing changed between then and now. All I can think of is that whatever studio executive that originally said yes finally came out of his cocaine binge, saw what he approved, and immediately rescinded the order. Thanks for getting our hopes up, asshole.