'Dark Tower' to become Film Trilogy?

Stephen King's 'Dark Tower' Set For Film Trilogy, TV Series By 'Beautiful Mind' Trio

I'm going to say this with full comprehension that Ron Howard/Akiva Goldsman won't read what I'm typing, and wouldn't care even if they did:
If you're going to make a Dark Tower trilogy, please please pleeease don't even try to base it on a direct adaptation from King's books. Lord of the Rings was a lazy adaptation of brilliant material, only successful because it was already the most popular novel of the 20th century and the producers pulled out all the stops on the production budget. (Let's face it: as films, they're only marginally better than, say, the Harry Potter or Narnia movies.)
King's series is near and dear to my heart, and I think Roland is one of the best-written protagonists of modern mythology, but the books will not hold up to a big-screen adaptation. It's King's best work because he steps beyond narrative, both with a nod to Tolkien's concept of poeia and into a deliberately self-referential mockery of late-20th C. storytelling (both literary and cinematic). The feature-length-film-trilogy is probably the worst medium someone could use for that content.

That said, if one were to make a story about Roland and his pursuit of the Man in Black, without the intention of making the text of those books into something people will pay $15 for in IMAX 3D, I'm all for it. The report of a multi-phase release with a TV series to accompany three films is encouraging, in that Goldsman could write three different movies to fill out a larger story told with the TV series. We've been waiting for a long, long time for someone to successfully cross over from TV to cinema and back with a deft and deliberate pen... maybe this will be the moment. (No, Sex in the City does not count as a successful transition, at least not any more than Mr Bean does.)

The most encouraging part of previous reports on the possible adaptation was that Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (of Lost fame, and obvious fans of the books) weren't sure that it would be possible, and were happy not to do anything if it couldn't be done well. I wish they could have managed to secure the rights in perpetuity...

6 comments:

JKLMomof3 said...

Does the Stargate series count?

Jack said...

Hrm.
Yes, though it's not exactly the kind of transition that I would envision for the Dark Tower franchise. Both the Stargate film and TV show were successful, and they each did something completely different with the story (unlike the other examples I listed) but they had to basically abandon the possibility of a film sequel to accomplish that. Highlander managed to go back and forth... just not very well...

JKLMomof3 said...

Actually there were two more movies after SG1 and before Stargate Atlantis, although I would argue not nearly as successful as the first movie.

Jack said...

yeah, direct-to-DVD doesn't count. They were more like really long TV episodes. :P

(Arguably, so were most of the Star Trek: the Next Generation movies.)

JKLMomof3 said...

I have been corrected the movies were AFTER SG1 and DURING the run of Atlantis.

JKLMomof3 said...

Ya, I'll give you that one. Are you on-line somewhere, right now. Go onto MSN already :D