‘Dark Tower’ TV series brings in former ‘The Walking Dead’ showrunner

With Stephen King’s legendary opus, The Dark Tower, hitting theaters this weekend, the plan was for the franchise to become not only a series of movies but also a television series as well.

The idea is for the TV series to fill in background information and connect the movies in the series. While The Dark Tower is off to a disappointing start in theaters, there are still plans to bring it to television.

According to a Hollywood Reporter exclusive, The Dark Tower television series has signed a showrunner. Glen Mazzara has signed on to bring the television series to life. This is pretty exciting because Mazzara was the showrunner for The Walking Dead during the second and third season of the show. While Season 2 was slow and uneventful, Season 3 introduced the prison and brought The Governor to life.

Mazzara also worked on The Shield for four seasons and worked on the A&E series Damien, based on the classic horror movie The Omen.

"“I’ve been a Stephen King fan for decades, and the opportunity to adapt The Dark Tower as a TV series is a great honor,” Mazzara told THR. “The events of The Gunslinger, Wizard and Glass, The Wind Through the Keyhole and other tales need a long format to capture the complexity of Roland’s coming of age — how he became the Gunslinger, how Walter became the Man in Black, and how their rivalry cost Roland everything and everyone he ever loved. I could not be more excited to tell this story.”"

The Dark Tower opened in theaters on Friday with a small $7.7 million opening. According to Box Office Mojo, the Stephen King movie is only heading towards a $19 million opening weekend, which can’t make the studio happy. The production budget was $60 million so the movie will need a huge showing internationally to become a big enough success for sequels.

This could also hurt The Dark Tower television show since Idris Elba is set to return for the role of Roland for the series as well. It also really hurts the future of the franchise that the Rotten Tomatoes score is a very disappointing 18 percent as of Saturday morning, although the audience score is much higher at 62 percent.

To slightly alleviate concern, film director Nikolaj Arcel and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen are not involved in the TV series.

Glen Mazzara will serve as the writer for The Dark Tower television series. Along with Idris Elba, Dennis Haysbert (24) will appear as Roland’s father Steven Deschain and Tom Taylor will return as Jake. It is assumed Jake will be there in a bookend format with Roland telling him the story of his past.

Next: Stephen King’s ‘Dark Tower’ still coming to television

The Dark Tower television series will be primarily based on Wizard and Glass. There is no network signed on to air the series yet.