Ron Howard tackles Stephen King’s Dark Tower series

A couple of years ago, JJ Abrams got the rights to Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” series of books, and along with his “Lost” comrades Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse had planned to adapt them into either a TV/cable series or a movie trilogy. After ultimately deciding they’d never be able to do justice to the material, they returned the rights to the author.

Imagine’s Ron Howard, Akiva Goldsman and manga-haired Brian Grazer apparently feel no such trepidation, since Heat Vision says they’re currently looking at “a scenario that would see an adaptation begin as a movie, to be written by Goldsman and directed by Howard, that would lead to a TV series produced by Imagine’s small-screen division.”

The project is still in the early stages, but the speculation is that Universal would release the movie.

The vast “Dark Tower” tale (which really defies synopsis) spans seven fat books, a short story and a Marvel Comics series, and follows knightly gunslinger Roland as he travels his mystical and crumbling realm seeking the Man in Black and the structure of the title.