Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy’s production company Intrepid Pictures enjoyed a strong working relationship with the Netflix streaming service for several years, but the deal between the companies came to an end as 2022 came to a close, and Intrepid signed an exclusive multiyear overall series deal with Amazon MGM Studios. Soon after, Flanagan and Macy secured the rights to make Flanagan’s dream project a reality: they started developing a series adaptation of Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels. We haven’t heard much about the project since then, although Flanagan said during last year’s writers strike that The Dark Tower would be his top priority once the strike ended… and after he finished working on the feature adaptation of King’s short story The Life of Chuck. Flanagan also recently signed on to make the next Exorcist movie for Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions, seemingly pushing The Dark Tower further down the line. But during an interview with The Wrap, Amazon MGM Studios television head Vernon Sanders confirmed that Amazon is having weekly conversations with Flanagan about The Dark Tower and other Intrepid productions.
Sanders said, “Mike is incredibly passionate about this and we’re incredibly passionate about Intrepid. There are a few things in the hopper with Intrepid with us and we’re trying to figure out right now how to prioritize. So I don’t have anything to share specifically on Dark Tower other than we are in weekly conversations with him about this and a few other pieces that we’re leaning into.“
We previously heard that Intrepid was able to get the Dark Tower rights because Flanagan sent Stephen King “a very, very detailed outline of what I wanted to do with it. And it was in response to that, that he gave us the rights. A project like this, I wouldn’t want to be involved in it at all If we were taking it in a direction that was going to be blasphemous to the Stephen King material, but he’s been very, very supportive and very excited about what we’d like to do with it.“
Flanagan has said he envisions The Dark Tower story playing out over the course of five seasons, so here’s hoping that he’ll not only be able to get a first season of the show made, but also that he’ll be able to continue through the remaining four seasons worth of story. He has also said that the five seasons could be followed by two feature films, but he doesn’t want to get too far ahead of himself. The focus right now is on getting the series up and running.
Many of Stephen King’s stories and novels are connected to The Dark Tower in some way, but the Dark Tower series itself consists of The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, The Wind Through the Keyhole, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, The Dark Tower, and the short story The Little Sisters of Eluria.
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