Dark Tower TV series in development for Amazon Prime
By Shawn Lealos
When Stephen King’s Dark Tower was on its way to the big screen, there were big plans for it, including a TV series.
However, thanks to a PG-13 rating and a shortened running time hurting the flow of the story, Dark Tower ended up falling short of expectations — alienating the core Stephen King fans and not luring in basic moviegoers. As a result of the critical and box office failure, the series seemed dead-in-the-water.
That may no longer be the case. The Dark Tower TV series was planned as a spin-off of the movie, a way to tie the hopeful movie franchise together as the series would tell stories that the films would not. However, while the chance for a second movie is likely dead, Deadline reports that the TV series is still in development — at Amazon.
Originally, the idea was for the first season of Dark Tower on TV to tell the story of Roland as a young man, with Idris Elba signed to star in a possible bookend to the story. Glen Mazzara (The Walking Dead) signed on as the showrunner the week before the movie hit theaters. At the time there was no network.
After this, the news was that the Dark Tower TV show would reboot the entire franchise, ignoring the events of the movie after it bombed at the box office. With that in mind, the Dark Tower TV series is now at Amazon and production is supposed to start this summer, but there is still no word on the actual storyline or when the series will take place in the timeline of the Stephen King novels.
The same article also mentioned that Amazon is working on a new series based in the world of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time novels. There are 14 novels in that fantasy series.
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These are massive projects, and when added to adaptations of the Ringworld series, Conan the Barbarian and Lord of the Rings, it seems that Amazon is wrapping up their most prominent books for TV deals. This plan is a smart move since they can sell the books straight from their site while fans watch the shows on their Prime service.