For better or worse, a good book often needs a great TV or movie adaptation to be truly famous. There’s no better proof of this than Stephen King, whose legendary bibliography has formed the basis of iconic movies like The Shining, It, and The Shawshank Redemption. But when you’ve written dozens upon dozens of books, not every one of them will be suited for another medium.
One of the biggest flops of the King adaptation oeuvre has only enhanced the reputation of its source material for being unfilmable, but a prolific horror director who’s tackled King’s work several times already is determined to make it work. It may be just one of many irons he has in the fire, but there’s a hopeful update to a project that looked cursed.
In a Vanity Fair article promoting his newest project, The Life of Chuck (also based on a Stephen King story), director Mike Flanagan revealed that his long-awaited Dark Tower adaptation almost derailed this project. According to the article, King was hesitant to let Flanagan have the rights to The Life of Chuck for fear it would distract him from The Dark Tower, which Flanagan is currently developing as a series for Amazon Prime Video.
“He doesn’t like to give the same filmmaker more than one thing, because it typically means one thing is not advancing at all,” Flanagan said. “He said, ‘Well, let’s focus on The Tower and I’ll try to keep this one available for you for later.’”
But then last year’s writers’ and actors’ strikes slowed production on The Dark Tower to a halt, and a quicker King adaptation was suddenly feasible. “I was off like a shot,” Flanagan said. “I think I turned in the draft to him before he got around to sending the formal agreement.”
So while Flanagan may be off promoting an entirely different King adaptation, it’s not because The Dark Tower is stalled. Now that The Life of Chuck is finished and the strikes are resolved, work on The Dark Tower can continue... if that Exorcist reboot doesn’t distract Flanagan next.
