While we saw ‘It’ killing box office sales this year, Stephen King’s longest work bombed and now the author of ‘The Dark Tower‘ shares why he feels that happened. Critic and audience complaints have run the gambit of problems from pacing to special effects and beyond. However, the esteemed author who has seen a vast body of work adapted to the big screen has unique insight on why this one didn’t work. Hopefully, it will be something that execs keep in mind when continuing the film into a television series and if they gamble on filming a sequel.
According to King, the problems with the film were two-fold and ranged from runtime to tone. Specifically, he states that:
“The major challenge was to do a film based on a series of books that’s really long, about 3,000 pages. The other part of it was the decision to do a PG-13 feature adaptation of books that are extremely violent and deal with violent behavior in a fairly graphic way. That was something that had to be overcome, although I’ve gotta say, I thought [screenwriter] Akiva Goldsman did a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie. The TV series they’re developing now … we’ll see what happens with that. It would be like a complete reboot, so we’ll just have to see.”
Fans who have seen the film will have complaints about the tone and even the ending for sure. While you could partially get around the length as the cinematic take was another turn of the wheel and a continuation, not an adaptation, it still tried to fit too much into too small of a space. It should never have tried to tell a complete story as the original plan of a trilogy of films would have made much more sense.
For the rating and what that caused, it should be noted that this isn’t the first time King believes it should be rated R as he previously stated:
“I’d love to see the next picture be R. That’s sort of where we’re coming from now, and where the movie needs to go.”
Sadly, it seems as if we’ll have to rely on just the television series to tell us the rest of the story. Hopefully, it’ll end up somewhere like Netflix or HBO where an R-Rating isn’t that hard of a sell.
Do you agree with King that these were the greatest two issues with ‘The Dark Tower’ or did something else stand out as the greatest culprit on why the film didn’t work? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Vulture
