Mike Flanagan Opens Up About How Closely His DARK TOWER Adaptation Will Follow Stephen King’s Books
Fans of Stephen King’s epic Dark Tower saga have been waiting a long time to see the Gunslinger’s journey properly realized on screen, and with Mike Flanagan steering the ship for Amazon, excitement is high.
Flanagan has already proven he can navigate King’s worlds with Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Life of Chuck, and many feel he’s the filmmaker most capable of finally getting this sprawling, genre-bending universe right.
The big question has always been how faithful a Dark Tower series could be, especially given the source material’s massive intertextual web. Flanagan recently offered some refreshingly candid insight into that challenge.
King’s Dark Tower saga spans decades of his career and folds in characters and ideas from across his entire bibliography. That interconnected nature is part of what makes the books so compelling, but it’s also the primary obstacle in translating them to television.
On the Kingcast podcast, Flanagan explained that he simply can’t create a one hundred percent faithful adaptation because Amazon doesn’t own the rights to every character the novels pull from.
Randall Flagg and Father Callahan are crucial pieces of the story, but they also appear in adaptations of The Stand and Salem’s Lot, which are tied up with different studios. As Flanagan put it:
"[Randall] Flagg, you have to. You know you have to get into Father Callahan, like that's not negotiable. Which means that you're going to Warner Brothers, cause they've got 'Salem's Lot,' you got to talk to them.
“Crimson King is actually a whole different thing, because there's a history of adaptation with 'Hearts in Atlantis,' which pulls in all sorts of stuff based on that deal that shouldn't have been pulled in because it's not in the movie.
“'Low Men in Yellow Coats' also, you gotta go to Warner Brothers, because when they optioned the story, that was also included, whether they put it in the movie or not."
If this series were at HBO, rights issues might be simpler, but with Amazon backing the show, Flanagan has to navigate a more complicated rights landscape.
He also said it’s "not logistically possible" to include every King character tied into the novels. Thankfully, the books offer plenty of room for creative solutions. Flanagan said:
"What are the other characters in the King universe that could fulfill a role like that and get the fans excited, even though you're changing it? For me, I'm like what about Abra Stone?
“When you go into the what if you can't get Father Callahan, which is always a thing that comes up, and I think we can, but what if you can't, well who can fill that role?
“Who's a character that's presumed dead in another King story who can come into this story and have a similar arc of redemption?"
Abra Stone from Doctor Sleep is a natural fit for Flanagan since he already brought her to life once. He also floated Dick Hallorann as a possible substitute for Callahan. Thanks to the multiverse nature of the Dark Tower books, the show could easily reintroduce Hallorann by pulling him from a reality where he survived The Shining or by having him awaken in Mid-World itself.
While fans will love the deep-cut references, Flanagan wants the series to be approachable for viewers who’ve never touched a King novel. The books themselves operate the same way. Father Callahan’s story in The Dark Tower still lands even if you’ve never read Salem’s Lot. That’s the needle Flanagan wants to thread.
The novels reference everything from The Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter to Star Wars, the Beatles, and The Magnificent Seven. It’s one of the saga’s most fun qualities, but it’s also a massive rights puzzle. Flanagan described the challenge like this:
"How do you make it so the King fans will lean forward and be excited about this particular change, but that people who haven't read the books and are being introduced to this connected universe will be able to recognize it from their cinematic experience?"
And that’s before even addressing the wildest curveball in the series King writing himself into the sixth book. Will the show keep that meta twist? Or will the characters cross paths with a fictional version of Flanagan instead? He’s keeping that mystery close to the chest for now.
The good news is that the initial seasons of the series won’t need to tackle the most complicated elements right away. The intertextual chaos of the books doesn’t kick into high gear until around the third installment, which means season one can focus on the core story of Roland tracking the Man in Black across a desolate wasteland.
Flanagan sees this slow build as the key to making the oddities work later, explaining:
"The gift of 'The Dark Tower' is if you do it right, and you start at the beginning, you're dealing with one character following another character in a barren wasteland, where there's not even a structure to distract you.
“It is one person following another person. It's very simple, and everything is added. And it's added at the right cadence that you're meeting new characters, and the world is expanding, so that by the time you're arguing about what to do with Father Callahan, and to what extent the Emerald City is going to come into play, by then you've already built enough of this that the audience is with you whether they're familiar with the source material."
It’s an exciting approach that respects the novels’ structure while acknowledging the realities of adaptation. If Flanagan and Amazon can get viewers locked in early, the show will have the momentum and freedom to embrace the most surprising and eccentric aspects of King’s universe later on.
King fans have been waiting decades for The Dark Tower to get the treatment it deserves. If Flanagan’s passion and track record are any indication, this could finally be the journey to Mid-World we’ve all been hoping for!