Amazon is making a major play to snatch Netflix’s streaming crown. They are investing big time in potentially huge hits, which sound super expensive. Perhaps the highest-profile is the ‘Lord of the Rings’ series, but they have also recently announced plans for shows based on Iain M. Banks book series ‘Culture’, Larry Niven’s Ringworld and Neal Stephenson’s ‘Snow Crash’. Now they have acquired a project that might surpass ‘Lord of the Rings’– ‘The Dark Tower’.
‘The Dark Tower’ TV series has been in development since before the film adaptation came out and flopped. There had been some question as to whether the failure of the movie would scuttle plans for the show, but it appears that things are chugging right along. It’s almost a given that the series will be completely divorced from the film.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is reportedly desperate for the service to find its own ‘Game of Thrones’ which is why they coughed up so much money for ‘Lord of the Rings’. If done properly, ‘The Dark Tower’ could prove to be a similar success, since like ‘Game of Thrones, which was based on George R.R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice & Fire’ novels, ‘The Dark Tower’ is based on Stephen King’s lengthy novel series,which could yield many seasons worth of episodes.
‘The Dark Tower’ has a dense, rich mythology. It made very little sense to try and turn it into a movie in the first place, much less trying to cram an entire novel into one film.
‘The Walking Dead”s Glen Mazzara will serve as showrunner. Nikolaj Arcel reveals that he worked on the scripts for the first season, saying:
“It’s being written. I was part of writing the pilot, like the first season ideas and the pilot and the second episode. It’s gonna be awesome. What was exciting about that, whereas with the film, we were really trying to create an introduction and make a standalone film that could sort of live in itself, but what was also exciting, working on the TV show at the same time, is that is totally canon.”
More details as they emerge!
Source: Deadline
