The multi-adaptation of Stephen King’s book series ‘The Dark Tower’ has hit another roadblock as Variety has announced that Warner Bros. has decided to pass on the project. But the development of this movie is not entirely finished as there may be one last saving grace for the film.
Even after a script rewrite by Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman (‘I am Legend’, ‘I, Robot’, ‘A Beautiful Mind’) and Russell Crowe expressing that he would be willing to play the lead role of Roland Deschain, Warner Bros decided to completely bail on the film. An individual close to the studio cited concerns over producing a project of this magnitude and the financial obligations towards that as a possible reason for the project stalling.
Warner Bros. is the second studio to pass on ‘The Dark Tower’ with Universal first attempting to produce it, but after budgetary concerns and ongoing story development and logistical issues, they decided to abandon the film. Six months later, Warner Bros decided to give it a try but has now officially decided not to move forward.
You can’t blame Warner Bros. for their decision. Even with the talents of Ron Howard as a director and his production company with Brian Grazer, Imagine Entertainment, behind the project, the scope of what was hoped to be accomplished is a daunting one. It’s a rather complicated and involved story to film as it combines multiple genres including western, fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Because of the immense amount of material from the 7 novel series, ‘The Dark Tower’ was to be a film trilogy with 2 television mini-series to air between the release of the 1st and 2nd film and the 2nd and 3rd films.
However, since the announcement of Warner Bros. backing out of the project, Media Rights Capital (MRC) has begun series talks to finance the film themselves. MRC’s co-CEO, Modi Wiczyk is a big fan of Stephen King and with the success of their development of the Mark Wahlberg film, ‘Ted’, along with the upcoming Matt Damon sci-fi film ‘Elysium‘, the company apparently has the capital to back an ambitious project like ‘The Dark Tower’.
So the film may be down but not out. Although MRC has a distribution arrangement with Universal, it is unclear if they would still release the film considering they have passed on it once already.
We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the development of this story and will give you updates about the progress of ‘The Dark Tower’ as they come in.
Source: Deadline
