Mike Flanagan Says His Massive Stephen King TV Series is Still Happening While He Makes ‘The Exorcist’: “It has not at all stalled”
Mike Flanagan has an excellent report card. Not only does the creator of such Netflix horror classics as The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher have a luxe track record for crafting excellent horror television, but he’s also repeatedly proven himself in the world of Stephen King adaptations. In 2017 he turned the once-thought-unadaptable Gerald’s Game into an excellent film and followed it with the big-budget theatrical staging of Doctor Sleep, King’s sequel story to The Shining.
So, it’s no surprise that horror fans were thrilled to hear Flanagan was developing The Dark Tower, King’s magnum opus, into a potential streaming series. A vast and wild collection of eight novels and numerous other ventures, The Dark Tower is a massive undertaking that’s been through the development hell wringer for decades. While a movie was released in 2017 due to a lackluster response, better and more in-depth adaptations have been trying to emerge for ages. Amazon even developed a pilot for their series some years ago, but dropped the project in favor of other pricey fantasy series like The Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time.
Flanagan himself has gone on record several times these past couple of years to assure fans that his vision of The Dark Tower is on track, but nothing truly official has yet to be announced. And when the director was tapped by Blumhouse to salvage The Exorcist after The Exorcist: Believer failed to make an impact last year, fans became worried about the fate of Tower.
My Dread Central podcast Development Hell recently covered The Dark Tower in detail during their limited audio series Stephen King Unseen.
Check out the full episode, featuring Rachel Reeves of The Losers’ Club, right here:
Well, we can breathe a little easier today, as the podcast Talking Scared hit up the horror creator for a hopeful update about the series. Here’s what he had to say about the potential of The Exorcist getting in the way of The Dark Tower:
“Oh, it’s not in the way. They coexist very well. I think the trick with The Dark Tower is just it still just takes an enormous amount of time to get going. But we’re further along than the last time we spoke. It seems to be moving on its own momentum. There’s so much logistical, boring, legal stuff that we have to kind of machete our way through to get that thing moving. But yeah, it has not at all stalled and none of the other work that’s that’s kind of emerged has in any way taken away from it.”
Not one to hold back on fans, Flanagan gave more details on the current situation, saying:
“It became so clear to me that that kind of oil tanker of a project was just gonna be moving along. It’s perfectly feasible for me to be working on other things at the same time. And I wish that wasn’t the case. And there’s gonna be a point hopefully soon where that project needs to knock everything else outta the way, where Tower has to kind of assert itself … I couldn’t make that the case now if I wanted to. There’s just too much we’re still having to kind of get through to get it up.”
Will we get to see Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of The Dark Tower anytime soon? Time will tell. But at least we can breathe easier knowing that his next movie isn’t a replacement for the hotly anticipated project.
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