Fans of Flanagan and Stephen King now have something to rejoice about as Flanagan stretches forth his hands to craft a made-for-television adaptation of The Dark Tower series.

The Dark Tower series is an iconic work of King and one of the first works demonstrating a shift in his creative output. The Dark Tower is classified as fantasy, science fiction, western, and horror, a hodgepodge of genres variant from King’s strictly genre-specific (horror) fare. Stephen King once spoke of the The Dark Tower series in a manner that could only define it as his opus. A statement by King on stephenking.com reads, “I have written enough novels and short stories to fill a solar system of the imagination, but Roland’s story is my Jupiter—a planet that dwarfs all others….” Undoubtedly this is due to the investment of time spent on this work. Reportedly, King began the series in 1970 and continued to pour into it for over 42 years, a considerable chunk of his life. And as a result, The Dark Tower series is the” Linchpin” of his imaginative multiverse.

There are no words that adequately frame the beauty of the series. It is something one must behold for themselves either through King’s voice via page or a visual adaptation. The written text remains available for those who desire that King’s prose stroke their imagination. Unfortunately, there are few visual adaptations wherein others may find their enjoyment. 

Visual Adaptation (Film/TV)

The most recent adaptation of The Dark Tower was released in 2017 and was co-written by Nikolaj Arcel. It was a highly anticipated film with Idris Elba in the lead as Roland and Matthew McConaughey as the antagonist, “The Man in Black.” However, the film did not impress fans of Stephen King’s work. Nevertheless, King himself was not disenchanted with the result. Perhaps this was because of his awareness of the production team’s challenge. King told Vulture in an up close and personal interview, “The major challenge was doing a film based on a long series of books, about 3,000 pages. And the other part was the decision to do a PG-13 feature adaptation of extremely violent books that deal with violent behavior in a fairly graphic way.” 

Given the lukewarm sentiment from audiences regarding the feature, it is highly probable that some agreed that perhaps the movie was too tame. Whatever the rationale, it failed to meet expectations, as is sometimes the case with adaptive material.