Well, damn.
Deadline is reporting that Amazon has passed on the Dark Tower TV series based on the acclaimed series by Stephen King. The show, which would have been produced by The Walking Dead’s Glen Mazzara, was pitched as a faithful adaptation of the novels unlike the lackluster and dismissed 2017 film starring Idris Elba. The series was going to follow the early years of Roland the Gunslinger and would showcase how he first got his guns, how he came into contact with the dreaded Man in Black and how he became the last beacon of hope for the crumbling Mid-World.
But now it’s not happening.
Amazon never greenlit an entire series but rather gave Mazzara and MRC the go-ahead for a pilot. Amazon isn’t dumb and knew that they didn’t want to spend boatloads of cash on a series like this without seeing a test pilot first. They have already committed millions to their Lord of the Rings, which was ordered straight to series. They’re not going to do that for every big-budget adaptation that comes along. So they ordered a pilot and, according to Deadline, the pilot just didn’t live up to the expectations Amazon had. It lacked the certain oomph that a show like this should have and so they passed on the entire thing. So the books will not be receiving a proper adaptation that redeems fans after the colossal letdown that was the movie. Now fans only have the novels which I guess is all that really matters. But still, this news stings.
It’s somewhat surprising to hear this because 1) we are in an age where it seems that every King property is being adapted, even those that have been before and 2) Amazon is looking for big, juicy series in the vein of Game of Thrones. They have more money than practically any company on Earth and are looking to spend it. But, hey, you don’t get to the top by spending money in stupid ways. They need confidence in their projects, they need to know that it’s worth it. While we will never see what the Dark Tower pilot looked like, apparently it wasn’t up to snuff and certainly not worth it to Amazon.
Is this the last we will see of Roland and his journey to save The Dark Tower? Honestly, I kind of think it is. The movie was such a miss that this series was the last hope for fans longing to see King’s tale on screen. The story requires a studio like Amazon to funnel a lot of money into it, The Dark Tower can’t be done on the cheap. So, yes, maybe HBO or Netflix may someday invest the necessary funds to create this faithful adaptation. But what’s more likely is that we will never get the Dark Tower show we want or that it ends up being created by SyFy or another low-budget network like that. I don’t know which fate is worse.