Stephen King's The Dark Tower coming to the big screen....and small screen

[soonerdawg1]

NEWS RELEASE

UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND NBC UNIVERSAL TELEVISION
ENTERTAINMENT TO MAKE FILM TRILOGY AND
TELEVISION SERIES BASED ON STEPHEN KING’S
EPIC SERIES OF NOVELS
THE DARK TOWER
Academy Award® Winners Akiva Goldsman, Ron Howard and
Brian Grazer Will Produce the Three Films and the TV Series
Based on The Dark Tower

UNIVERSAL CITY, CA, September 8, 2010 – Universal Pictures Chairman Adam
Fogelson and Co-Chairman Donna Langley—along with Jeff Gaspin, Chairman, NBC
Universal Television Entertainment and Angela Bromstad, President, Primetime
Entertainment, NBC & Universal Media Studios—today announced that Universal
Pictures and NBC Universal Television Entertainment have acquired the rights to produce
three films and a television series based on the seven epic novels, short stories and comic
books from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.

Ron Howard will direct the first film and the first season of television, which will be
written by Goldsman. Goldsman will produce the film through his Weed Road Pictures
with Howard and Grazer for Imagine Entertainment. Howard, Grazer and Goldsman will
executive produce the television series for Universal Media Studios. Kerry Foster will
executive produce the first film for Weed Road Pictures along with Todd Hallowell and
Erica Huggins for Imagine Entertainment.

“I’ve been waiting for the right team to bring the characters and stories in these books to
film and TV viewers around the world,” said King. “Ron, Akiva, Brian along with
Universal and NBC have a deep interest and passion for the The Dark Tower series and I
know that will translate into an intriguing series of films and TV shows that respect the
origins and the characters in The Dark Tower that fans have come to love.”

The Dark Tower is Stephen King’s opus of seven bestselling novels with, to date, more than
30 million copies sold in 40 countries. The novels incorporate themes from multiple
genres including fantasy, science fiction, horror and adventure. After the series was
completed, a prequel of comic books based on one of the characters was also published.

“Building a franchise home for The Dark Tower is an exciting opportunity for this studio,
and we’re thrilled that Stephen has entrusted us to bring his beloved novels to the big
screen,” said Fogelson.

“Stephen King is a brilliant storyteller who creates imaginary worlds that resonate with the
broadest audiences across ages and demographics,” said Gaspin. “We are thrilled to
partner with our colleagues in the film division and Brian, Ron and Akiva to bring
Stephen’s vision to the largest audience possible through this innovative multi-platform
collaboration.”

Howard, Grazer and Goldsman are planning for the first film in the trilogy to be
immediately followed by a television series that will bridge the second film. After the
second film, the television series will pick up allowing viewers to explore the adventures of
the protagonist as a young man as a bridge to the third film and beyond.

“We are excited to have found partners at Universal who understand and embrace our
approach to King’s remarkable epic,” said Howard. “By using both the scope and scale of
theatrical filmmaking and the intimacy of television we hope to more comprehensively do
justice to the characters, themes and amazing sequences King has given us in The Dark
Tower novels. It might be the challenge of a lifetime but clearly a thrilling one to take on
and explore.”

“The worlds of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series are richly detailed, inter-locking and
deeply connected,” said Goldsman. “By telling this story across media platforms and over
multiple hours—and with a view to telling it completely—we have our best chance of
translating Roland’s quest to reach The Dark Tower onto screen. We are proceeding with
tremendous excitement, fidelity to the source material and, quite frankly, no small amount
of awe at this opportunity.”

“King has created the most visually enthralling places and characters in The Dark Tower,”
said Grazer. “The synergy created across all the media divisions of our partners at NBC
Universal to tell this remarkable story is ground-breaking and invigorating. This project
will be one of the most exciting and challenging that I will have ever worked on and I am
thrilled to be a part of it.”

 

[RenoChazz]

I heard about this too. If you haven't read this series, do so, the best series of books I've ever read. Looking forward to this. I was really hoping HBO would pick it up and make into a series cause they do such an awesome job with that kind of stuff

 

[soonerdawg1]

i'm glad it's going to the big screen as a trilogy....i was afraid it was going to get turned into a series on ABC or something.....like the idea also of doing a series on TV between each film to explore the characters between movies.....a lot of good potential here

 

[HacheMan]

Sorry for my ignorance guys but can can you give those of us who haven't heard of it a quick rundown of what The Dark Tower is about?

 

[HacheMan]

By the way, here's a fake trailer someone made on youtube back in 2007.

At the beginning they say it's not an official trailer and not to wait for the movie because it will never come! LOL






<EMBED height=385 type=application/x-shockwave-flash width=480 src=http://www.youtube.com/v/-66hqisIdsU?fs=1&hl=en_US allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></EMBED></EMBED>

 

[soonerdawg1]

Hache,

The Dark Tower is a series of 7 books by Stephen King that took him roughly 30 years to complete.....it's about a gunslinger who lives in a world much like ours, but his world is falling apart....his quest is to find the Dark Tower, and he comes into our world and gets 3 people to help him....he kind of bounces around between our world and his....King says the books were inspired by the sphaghetti westerns by sergio leone.....if you like to read, i'd recommend the 2nd book of the series, as it's an excellent stand alone novel and would probably compel you to read the whole series....the first book is pretty short and is one of my least favorite in the series, maybe because he wrote it while he was in college....

as far as the movie, there was serious doubts that king would live long enough to finish the story.....the makers of Lost were going to make the movie, but they backed out of the deal last year and i hadn't heard anything else about it until today

 

[barman]

Sorry for my ignorance guys but can can you give those of us who haven't heard of it a quick rundown of what The Dark Tower is about?

Here's a thumbnail summary that does not include any spoilers


======
Plot summary

In the story, Roland Deschain is the last living member of a knightly order known as gunslingers and the last of the line of "Arthur Eld", his world's analogue of King Arthur. Politically organized along the lines of a feudal society, it shares technological and social characteristics with the American Old West but is also magical. Many of the magical aspects have vanished from Mid-World, but traces remain as do relics from a technologically advanced society. Roland's quest is to find the Dark Tower, a fabled building said to be the nexus of all universes. Roland's world is said to have "moved on", and it appears to be coming apart at the seams. Mighty nations have been torn apart by war, entire cities and regions vanish without a trace and time does not flow in an orderly fashion. Even the sun sometimes rises in the north and sets in the east. As the series opens, Roland's motives, goals and age are unclear, though later installments shed light on these mysteries.
For a detailed synopsis of the novels, see the relevant article for each book.
[edit] Characters

Main article: List of characters from the Dark Tower series
Along his journey to the Dark Tower, Roland meets a great number of both friends and enemies. For most of the way he is accompanied by a group of people who together with him form the Ka-tet of the Nineteen and Ninety-nine, consisting of Jake Chambers, Eddie and Susannah Dean, and Oy. Among his many enemies on the way are the Man in Black and The Crimson King.

 

[soonerdawg1]

also, the latter books in the series re-introduced us to characters from the stand, salem's lot, and a couple others (king basically tying up loose ends and letting us know what happened), so it will be interesting to see if they go this way in the movie....

 

[HacheMan]

Thanks Guys

So is it based as a Western?

 

[soonerdawg1]

starts out that way, but as the series evolves as he spends more time in our world....it's not a "dudes on horseback shooting pistols" type western setting.....i don't wanna give too much away and it's been 5 years since i finished reading it, but i think the way they are planning it is awsome.....

didn't think they could do it justice as a single film, and there was no way it could be done on network tv (violence and cussing)....i was thinking the best option would be HBO (maybe a 3 or 4 part series for each book), but i'm really digging the idea of showing the movie on the big screen, and then using network tv to bridge the gaps between the next movie....now, hopefully i'll live long enough to see the end product@)

 

[SoCal]

I was a big time King fan about 15-20 yrs ago. Loved some of his early stuff like "The Shining", "Pet Semetary", and the short stories under the Bachman Pseudo-name. I have at least a full shelf of his early titles that I consider keepers. Lost interest in his work somewhere around "The Stand". Also never finished "It" or "the dark tower". Can't put my finger on what it was, but those titles never sucked me in after 30+ pages and I stopped reading King altogether. Perhaps someday I will resume those titles and give them another shot. I think it's the whole epic type scenario in which the whole world is at stake that turns me off. The Dark Tower synopsis in this thread is a good example of "the world in peril" I am referring to. It's just too fantastic IMO. Maybe the titles deserve another look... just don't know...

 

[soonerdawg1]

king never got old for me until the late 90s when he suddenly felt the need to be known for something other than a horror writer....he tried writing some mainstream soap opera type shit but it sucked....he got good reviews, but the books sucked....needful things was probably the last novel of his that i read and enjoyed

 

[soonerdawg1]

The Dark Tower Gets A Release Date

Universal has locked in release dates for some of its big upcoming movies, among them Ron Howard's adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower..
Ron Howard's Dark Tower adaptation will make history, as he and Universal are bringing together a movie trilogy and tv series based on Stephen King's much loved novels/comics. And now wed have a release date. The first of the trilogy is set for release on Friday, May 17, 2013.

Just a little bit of a wait then! But it could really be worth it. Apparently the plan is to start with the first film in the trilogy and link the following films with a season of Tv episodes between them. This epic undertaking has drawn comparison to Peter Jackson's work on LOTR, and Howard acknowledges and invites it..

“What Peter did was a feat, cinematic history. The approach we’re taking also stands on its own, but it’s driven by the material. I love both, and like what’s going on in TV. With this story, if you dedicated to one medium or another, there’s the horrible risk of cheating material. The scope and scale call for a big screen budget. But if you committed only to films, you’d deny the audience the intimacy and nuance of some of these characters and a lot of cool twists and turns that make for jaw-dropping, compelling television. We’ve put some real time and deep thought into this, and a lot of conversations and analysis from a business standpoint, to get people to believe in this and take this leap with us. I hope audiences respond to it in a way that compels us to keep going after the first year or two of work. It’s fresh territory for me, as a filmmaker.”

For some of Universal's other tentpole picture(such as Snow White And The Huntsman, The Bourne Legacy) release dates click on the link back to Deadline below.

 

[lax_gunman]

Sounds pretty sweet, alot of pressure on Ron though. I love the idea of mixing television in with the movies. I'm interested in who they will cast to be Roland.

 

[RenoChazz]

I agree the first book is really short and slow and almost feels like an old twilight zone episode. The second book is very good and will hook you.

 

[soonerdawg1]

‘The Dark Tower’: Ron Howard’s plans (and passion) for Stephen King epic



EXCLUSIVE

"The Dark Tower" from the pages of Marvel Comics

The bookshelf creations of Stephen King have been keeping people up at night for decades but Ron Howard has been losing sleep lately for a different reason — the Oscar-winning filmmaker is becoming a bit obsessive about his plan to bring King’s most epic creation, ”The Dark Tower,” to the movie screen.
“I really can’t stop thinking about it,” Howard said while shaking his head. “We’ve been meeting and talking and I’ve been reading and researching and just kind of living with it. I’ve been constantly going through stuff and I’ve just been re-listening to it [on audio books] on my iPod and we’ve been sending e-mails back and forth, ‘What about this approach? What do you think of this idea?’ We’re finding the shape of it. We’re moving quickly now, as quickly as we can, and I feel challenged in the most exciting ways.”
As challenges go, bringing the seven-novel ”Dark Tower” series to the screen is a colossal one but Howard’s ambitions match it. The director of “Apollo 13” and “The Da Vinci Code” is teaming up with producer Brian Grazer and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman to present King’s magnum opus as a film trilogy as well as a tie-in television series. The same trio each took home Oscars for their collaboration on “A Beautiful Mind” and it was while working on that film that Goldsman brought Howard the idea of adapting the genre-mashing ”Dark Tower” and bringing to life its central character, a nomadic gunslinger named Roland Deschain, who tangles with magic, monsters and mutants.

Ron Howard (Imagine Entertainment)

Howard is one of the most respected, successful and well-liked filmmakers in Hollywood but he was far from casual in approaching King. ”We worked on it for a year before we even met with him,” Howard said. “It was all about putting something together that was good enough and getting such an understanding of the material that Stephen King would say, ‘Yes, that’s the way into this story.”
The project has not been green-lit yet but Universal Pictures and NBC Universal Television Entertainment announced in September the bold plan to chronicle the story as a multimedia event. If all goes as planned, Howard will direct the first film and then the first season of a tie-in television series, both of which Goldsman will write. Two more films would follow. In a statement, King gushed about the endeavor: “I’ve been waiting for the right team to bring the characters and stories in these books to film and TV viewers around the world. Ron, Akiva, Brian along with Universal and NBC have a deep interest and passion for the ‘The Dark Tower’ series and I know that will translate into an intriguing series of films and TV shows that respect the origins and the characters in ‘The Dark Tower’ that fans have come to love.”

The King fantasy epic began in 1982 and has spanned seven novels – the original hardcover editions add up to a staggering 3,795 pages and 30 million copies sold — with an eighth installment, tentatively titled ”The Wind Through the Keyhole,” announced by the author last year. King released an additional novella in 1998, and for three years King has been adding new chapters to the saga within the pages of Marvel Comics. Howard said the 36 issues that have been published so far absolutely inform his own view of the mythology.
“It’s the ongoing evolution of the characters and the discovery,” Howard said of the comics that are plotted by Robin Furth and scripted by Peter David with King overseeing everything as creative director. “There are new interpretations of the rules of the world and the story. It’s a really useful and compelling part of this already fascinating creative journey that we’re on.”
Howard has brought arcane-spirited but crowd-pleasing bestsellers to the screen before with the Dan Brown adaptations, “The Da Vinci Code” in 2006 and “Angels & Demons“ in 2009, films that combined for $1.24 billion in worldwide box office (and featured the same Grazer-Goldsman-Howard team, as did 2005′s ”Cinderella Man“). This would be a far different challenge, Howard says, due to the epic scale and ambiguities of “Dark Tower” — the Brown books were intricate puzzles with a thriller’s pace while the King epic is a shadowy fantasy with dream logic and the underpinnings of a classic quest story.
“It’s different than anything I’ve ever done and in really interesting ways,” the 56-year-old said. “With ‘Da Vinci’ the mandate was different. That was about getting the story and the action and focusing on acting. With this, there’s this entire world and all of these references and there are the books and the graphic novels and just talking to Stephen and it’s all this ongoing conversation with the material and it’s really exciting. In all of it, he leaves a lot open to interpretation and so it gives a great deal of latitude.”

Stephen King (Richard Hartog Los Angeles Times)

“The Dark Tower” has plenty of latitude and longitude – the vast body of work covers a lot of ground at this point. That presents a sort of narrative intimidation — it’s easy to imagine a filmmaker becoming overwhelmed if he or she took a footnote-faithful approach to the canon. But Howard said that he and Goldsman know that the true power of the source material lies in the archetypal characters and the texture of the world. Their approach, he said, is to remember that less can be more: ”We say, ‘At their root they’re simple stories, don’t be afraid to keep it simple.’”
Staying simple might not be that easy. J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, who know plenty about intricate mythology as the co-creators of “Lost,” had plans to adapt “The Dark Tower” but walked away from the project and Lindleof candidly told USA Today that he was put off by the complexity of the project and his own idol worship when it comes to King. “I’m terrified of screwing it up,” Lindelof said. “I’d do anything to see those movies written by someone else. My guess is they will get made because they’re so incredible. But not by me.”

Brian Grazer, Akiva Goldsman and Ron Howard on the set of "The DaVinci Code"

The King books clearly draw on the legend of King Arthur, the complex tapestries of ”The Lord of the Rings” and – for the steely main character Deschain – the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and taciturn screen menace of Clint Eastwood. The stories go far and wide but at their center is the gunslinger on a quest for the mysterious castle of the title, which may or may not be the nexus of the universe, and despite his own Old West mien, Deschain roams a world of eerie magic and an end-of-time atmosphere where the sun doesn’t always rise in east and set in the west.
“It’s one of the things that really fascinated me about the challenge,” Howard said. “We love Roland the Gunslinger but we also like coming back to these worlds and these places. On one hand it is grounded and relatable but on the other hand it’s scary and strange and mind-blowing. There’s this dream quality to it and the mystery in that is what it’s all about – being compelled forward without all the answers.”

"The Dark Tower" from the pages of Marvel Comics

The character is a fan-favorite and Howard knows that the casting will be closely scrutinized. As this point in the process, most filmmakers would never engage in casual banter about the possible actors but Howard didn’t dodge the topic and nodded when names such as Daniel Craig, Hugh Jackman and Jon Hamm were mentioned.
“Sure, those are some names and on ‘The Dark Tower’ fansites they’re all about Viggo,” Howard said, referring to Viggo Mortensen, who has plenty of appropriate experience — he’s roamed a desolate, otherworldly landscape in “The Road,” wore iron on his hip in “Appaloosa” and forever won over fantasy fans as Aragorn in ”The Lord of the Rings” films.
Howard has an eclectic filmography as a director — “Cocoon” and “The Paper,” “Willow” and “Frost/Nixon,” “Backdraft” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” — but he said “The Dark Tower” would take him to new places.
“Filmically, there are tones in this that I have never used before, tones of fantasy menace and elements of horror and real fear,” Howard said. “And there’s the burden, on the characters, of this journey that is really palpable. That’s what we need to get on the screen. I think there’s something about [the Frank Darabont films] ‘Green Mile’ or a ‘Shawshank Redemption,’ the complexity and the ballast of them, those are two [of the Stephen King adaptations] where you do get the horror and suspense that’s there on the page. We’re charging ourselves with the responsibility of getting a real understanding of the material and utilizing many of the best aspects of the books and graphic novels.”
The right Roland? Viggo Mortensen, Daniel Craig and Kurt Russell. (Touchston Pictures / Buena Vista Pictures)

The target release for the first movie is 2013. The television series would then follow and bridge to the second film. After the second movie the television series would pick up again and carry forward to the final film in the trilogy. A television series that functions as the mortar between cinematic brick? It’s an audacious plan but in a September statement Goldsman said grand-scale storytelling is needed for the grand-scale source material.
“The worlds of Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’ series are richly detailed, inter-locking and deeply connected,” Goldsman said. “By telling this story across media platforms and over multiple hours—and with a view to telling it completely—we have our best chance of translating Roland’s quest to reach the Dark Tower onto screen. We are proceeding with tremendous excitement, fidelity to the source material and, quite frankly, no small amount of awe at this opportunity.”

​

It remains to be seen if an audience will follow a medium-jumping story on this scale and Howard calls the whole project “the challenge of a lifetime.” He said he’s happy to lose sleep for the great quest he’s undertaking and he’s happy to report that King is enthusiastic as well.
“We’re really early on, but he and I do know that he loves what he’s hearing and he’s excited about it,” Howard said. “He has just been so welcoming. ‘Welcome aboard’ is how I would describe the reception we got…. I think he has a genuine curiosity, even at this point in his amazing career, about the way his work can be taken to another medium and therefore a kind of openness and freedom about what those stories will look like. I hope it goes great. I hope it goes the way we think it will. It never does, really. But sometimes it goes better.”
– Geoff Boucher

 

[soonerdawg1]

EXCLUSIVE: After Javier Bardem's terrifying Oscar-winning turn as the assassin in No Country For Old Men, is there any doubt he'd fit as the gunslinger Roland Deschain in The Dark Tower, the mammoth adaptation of the Stephen King 7-novel series that’ll span three movies and a limited run TV series in between? I'm told that Bardem has officially been offered the lead role by director Ron Howard and Universal Pictures. While formal negotiations haven't yet begun, there's a high level of enthusiasm internally that they've got their cowboy. Akiva Goldsman has scripted the first movie, and will write the TV component as well. Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer is producing with Goldsman and the author. Universal is financing and distributing the films, and NBC Universal Television Entertainment is backing the TV component, which will either be a limited run series or a miniseries.
It has been a heady week for Bardem. He received a Best Actor nomination for his performance as a terminally ill street hustler in the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu-directed Biutiful, and Bardem and Penelope Cruz just welcomed their first son into the world. Since Deadline first revealed that King, Goldsman, Howard and Grazer were joining forces on the ambitious project that would tell the story on multiple platforms, speculation has been rampant over who'd play the lead role. Bardem has been mentioned, as has Viggo Mortensen and Christian Bale. Deschain is the last living member of a knightly order of gunslingers, and humanity’s last hope to save a civilization that will fall unless he finds the Dark Tower. At the time, Howard and Goldsman told me they saw the trilogy as their answer to the Peter Jackson-directed adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Instead of Middle Earth, the venue has an old West feel, which Goldsman described at the time as “an alternate Americana, one part post-apocalyptic, one part Sergio Leone.”
Bardem just wrapped the untitled next feature by Terrence Malick.
Howard plans at this point to direct the initial film as well as the TV component that will create a bridge to the second feature. The plan calls for the original actors to headline the TV version as well. The second film will pick up where the first left off. That would be followed by a TV installment that would be a prequel that introduces Deschain as a young man. The third film brings back the original cast once again return and complete the screen trilogy. So if Bardem closes a deal, he’ll likely appear in all three films and that first TV stint. Imagine's Erica Huggins will be executive producer with Kerry Foster of Weed Road. Bardem's repped by WME.

 

[KingofNicotine]

Let me ask you something since you read Stephen King and I don't.

Was the Shinning movie anything like the book?

 

[soonerdawg1]

pretty much, except in the book his wife wasn't so ugly and obnoxious

 

[texansfan]

I've read the books and I thought they were great. I'd be interested in seeing the movies, although it always seems the movies are never better than the books.