Stephen King Confirms He’s Writing for Mike Flanagan’s DARK TOWER Adaptation: ‘It’s Happening’

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower has had a long, winding road to adaptation, and this time, it seems like it’s finally getting the treatment fans have been waiting for.

Mike Flanagan, the filmmaker behind Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game, has been working on a faithful adaptation of King’s magnum opus, and now, King himself has confirmed he’s directly involved.

During an interview at IGN Fan Fest 2025 for his upcoming film The Monkey, King was asked if he’d be contributing new material to Flanagan’s Dark Tower, similar to how he wrote an epilogue for the The Stand miniseries in 2020. His response?

“All I can say is it’s happening. I am writing stuff now and I think that’s all I want to say because the next thing you know, I’ll stir up a bunch of stuff I don’t necessarily want to stir up yet. I’m in process right now, and to say too much feels like a jinx.”

For longtime Dark Tower fans, this is a big deal. King started writing The Gunslinger, the first book in the series, in 1970. The story spans seven novels and is deeply intertwined with nearly everything else he’s ever written.

His involvement in Flanagan’s adaptation could mean anything, from small refinements to major new material. If his work on The Stand miniseries is any indication, it’s possible he’s expanding certain character arcs or filling in gaps.

Whatever King is adding, I’m sure it will fit seamlessly into Flanagan’s vision. The director has been adamant that his adaptation will stick as close to the source material as possible. Back in 2022, Flanagan said:

“It would look like the books. The way not to do The Dark Tower is to try to turn it into something else, to try to make it Star Wars or make it Lord of the Rings.”

He added: “It is what it is, what it is is perfect. It’s just as exciting as all of those things and just as immersive. It’s a story about a tiny group of people, all the odds in the whole world are against them, and they come together. As long as it’s that, it’ll be fine and there won’t be a dry eye in the house.”

This should be a relief to fans after the disappointing Dark Tower movie in 2017, which tried to condense King’s sprawling saga into a single 95-minute film. Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey did what they could as Roland and The Man in Black, but the film's patchwork of events from across the series didn’t land with fans or critics.

In regards to bringing the story to life, Flanagan teased that they “have some potentially groundbreaking approaches to the filmmaking of it,” but he didn’t offer any details of what that could be.

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.”

There’s still no word on when Flanagan’s Dark Tower will go into production, but I’m excited to see what Flanagn delivers.