Abrams to visit Towers?

I’m a big fan of Stephen King, his books and the movies based upon said books. Almost all of his material has the big thumbs up from me. One of King’s stories I haven’t had the chance to get into though is THE DARK TOWER series.

Reason being is there’s seven parts of this series. That’s a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I’d absolutely love to dive right into that story, I’d probably like it twenty times more than that seven part saga about that wizard kid, and one day I’m sure I’ll get into King’s DARK TOWER books… but until then it looks like we have a screen adaptation to look forward too!

Cinematical spoke to Stephen King a year ago about the chance of seeing DARK TOWERS hit the screen, whether in movie form (doubtful) or mini-series. He had this to say:

“Well, I’ve said no to everybody recently, because I just didn’t think that the chances of it being a good movie….I mean, this is my life’s work, in a sense. It’s been there since the time when I was 22 years old and I finally finished it up somewhere in my 50s. So it’s very important to me.”

There goes that… wait a minute…

“….And I know J.J. Abrams work and Damon Lindelof, his collaborator on Lost. David is just a total comic-book freak and loves The Dark Tower. He likes those books and I trust those guys, cause they’ve got a lot on the ball. So, when they said ‘We’d like to talk about doing this,’ I said ‘You know what? Why don’t you option this and see if you can develop it.’ And they said ‘How much do you want for an option?’ And I said ‘nineteen dollars.’ And that’s what they paid me, and that’s where it is.”

I also think it’s noteworthy that Frank Darabont had approached King to do THE DARK TOWERS and King told him no. Well not a straight up no, he just thoguht Darabont had way too much on his plate to pile on a helping of DARK TOWER. So King turned to Abrams and Lindelof. Why the sudden change of heart though? Well it seems King is still not on board adapting the novels… but he is A-OK with adapting the DARK TOWER comic that was made from the novels.

Still following me? Well via the video below, it looks like Abrams and Lindelof are finally moving forward on this adaptation. Mind you, they’re in the very early stages apparently, but the chances are looking good.

So it looks like we may be seeing THE DARK TOWER come to the screen in one form or another. Sure, this is good news, but I highly doubt whatever they make will even touch the actual story King created with the series, so I’m still aiming to check out the books.

You can hear J.J. Abrams talk a bit about it below (as well as CLOVERFIELD 2) and you can read the vintage Stephen King interview over here. We’ll keep you updated on any more DARK TOWERS news.