Mike Flanagan Says His THE DARK TOWER Project Was Making "Enormous Progress" Before Strikes

Director Mike Flanagan has offered another update on his upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. This is a project that a lot of King fans are incredibly excited about!

Flanagan, who is behind projects such as The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, Gerald’s Game, and Doctor Sleep, envisions the adaptation of the books as a five-season series that will be followed by two standalone movies.

This is his dream project, and he and his creative team were making a lot of great and exciting progress on the series before the writers’ and actors’ strike hit. Now, it’s just pretty much a waiting game to start things back up, but once things are resolved this project is his top priority.

During a recent interview on The Kingcast, Flanagan said:

"I feel really good about where we are. Oddly, where we are at the moment is completely frozen, because of the strike, but we had a wonderful spring with it and we're making enormous progress on it, and I have every reason to believe that on the other side of the strike, it's gonna be priority #1.

He goes on to talk about the progress made on the project but can’t spill any real information. One thing is clear, though, he’s excited about how it’s all coming together:

"We have great partners on it that I can't talk about, and we've got some really exciting actors circling on it that I can't talk about, and we have some potentially groundbreaking approaches to the filmmaking of it that I just can't really talk about ... but what I can say is that my fears that any momentum we had developed was gonna be obliterated [by the strike], well, I don't really worry about that."

It’s going to be really cool to see how this epic fantasy Western project comes together. When Flanagan first announced the project, he said that the pilot script is “one of my favorite things I’ve ever gotten to work on.” He shared at the time:

“I wrote a pilot, we view it as a as a series that’s going at least five seasons. And having lived with this project as long as I have, I have an enormous amount of it worked out in my brain. But I have a pilot script I’m thrilled with and a very detailed outline for the first season and a broader outline for the subsequent seasons. I think eventually, if we’re able to get it going, there are some other writers I want to fold into that process whom I’ve worked with before; I think they would be really fabulous for a very small, intimate writers room where we can continue to break it.

“I’ll tell you, more than half of my life, I’ve closed my eyes and been able to watch a lot of this play out, I’ve dreamed about this. That first shot which comes right off at the first incredible sentence of the first book, The Gunslinger, I’ve had that image just rattling around in my head since I was an undergrad. It’s going to have to get out of there eventually, I really need to get it out of my head.

“The pilot script is one of my favorite things I’ve ever gotten to work on. It’s been surreal working on that. So we’ve been floored and grateful that Stephen King trusts us with such an undertaking, something so precious to him, and we hope to find the right partners to realize it.”

Flanagan also said that he’s looking to include characters from Doctor Sleep in The Dark Tower. He explained how that would be possible saying:

“The thing about the King universe is, it’s all connected. And the nexus point of those connections is The Dark Tower. In the Dark Tower universe, there are all these other characters from the King world that come into play in different ways. When you make changes to the source material to introduce characters who could have played a very important role in that story… Doctor Sleep was written after The Dark Tower was finished.”

He also went on to talk about the potential for adding those characters to his Dark Tower project:

“Abra Stone in the Dark Tower universe, as a Breaker [telepathic agent], is really interesting. There’s a character in The Dark Tower named Dandelo, who I think is a cousin of the True Knot, who’s this emotional vampire but who feeds on laughter instead of fear. But there’s room in that world for the True Knot themselves, there’s room for Rose The Hat. There might be room for Danny Torrance. There’s all kinds of stuff that could be amazing, if we’re able to get that property on its feet. There’s ways to pull in other things rom the King universe, and I think The Shining universe – the Doctor Sleep universe – could very seamlessly dovetail into it. Especially since, in our movie, Dick Hallorann all but points to The Dark Tower in his last scene with Dan.”

Stay tuned for additional updates on The Dark Tower adaptation. Are you excited about this project? Do you think Flanagan is going to be able to pull it off!?