Warner Bros. Passes On Ron Howard’s Adaptation Of Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’
HasThe Dark Towerfinally fallen? Imagine Entertainment partnersRon HowardandBrian Grazerhave been working up a very ambitious three-film and dual-TV series cycle of productions to adaptStephen King’s epic novel series. But last summer Universaldecided not to finance the project, and Imagine tookThe Dark Towerto other studios. In March, Warner Bros.showed interestand for the past months screenwriterAkiva Goldsmanhas been doing script revisions to make itmore budget-conscious.
Goldsman recently delivered his latest draft, and there was thepossibilitythatRussell Crowewould play the lead character Roland “the Gunslinger” Deschain. But now Warners has passed as well, leaving the project with a very uncertain future.
Varietysimply reports that WB has “decided not to move forward” withThe Dark Tower.
Imagine can once again take the project to other studios, but after Universal and WB had long and ultimately fruitless flirtations with the material, is anyone else going to want to take the very expensive chance on it?
Then there is the question of where the TV component might find a home. When Warner Bros. looked like the best financing and distribution option there was a lot of talk aboutHBO being the television homeforThe Dark Tower. But with WB turning away, that could mean that HBO would also not be interested. Regardless, without a feature film component it might not matter at all, unless Imagine decides to go TV-only for the adaptation. That might not be out of the question, but it would be a very different beast.
This is the second high-profile pass from WB in a week — only days ago the studiodecided not to makeThe Imitation Game, the film in development based on the story of pioneering mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. At one point WB seemed to be interested in the film as one with prestige potential, with Leonardo DiCaprio mentioned as a possible star. But the film is now out to other studios, with no word of a pickup at this point.
