It always did feel like it was too good to be true.
Ambitiously announced last year as a joint Universal and NBC venture and raising eyebrows everywhere was the unveiling of their planned multi-platform and groundbreaking adaptation of
Stephen King's magnum opus sci-fi western series
The Dark Tower that would be translated as three epic feature films and at least one, but probably two, t.v. series' in between. The history of cinema suggested that adaptations like this simply just don't happen - especially not for a series whose popularity and tone is somewhat cult-ish and certainly not as popular or well known in the mainstream as the works of Tolkien, JK Rowling or C.S. Lewis. In fact I would go as far as saying that in my near five years of reporting daily on film, the most surprisingly press release that ever landed in my inbox was the announcement of Universal's plans for King's epic novel and I thought for a long while it was a wind-up. But true it was and Universal seemed to pushing hard with the adaptation that
Ron Howard and
Akiva Goldsman (director & writer responsible for the Robert Langdon films The Da Vinci Code & Angels & Demons) had pitched, and later Battlestar Galactica's
Mark Verheiden jumped on board to spearhead the t.v. series. Universal & Howard even seemingly
pulled off the impossible, landing the Oscar winner and normally tentpole resistant
Javier Bardem to lead the whole epic saga as the gunslinger Roland Deschain, and filming was set to begin on the first film,
The Gunslinger, in the fall. But the foundations of the project look to be collapsing and we are told today The Dark Tower is very close to falling to it's death. Both
Variety and The Hollywood Reporter (article since removed, but re-posted
by Yahoo) report that inside sources say Universal are mulling over putting the sword to the project altogether and putting it into turnaround over budgetary concerns and even over some creative worry (the final chapter of King's novel has Universal brass scratching their heads). A make or break meeting has been scheduled for the coming days. If turnaround is chosen, Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment would need at least a co-financier to step forward with Universal, or if Universal want to wash their hands of the project entirely, another studio will need to take full responsibility with the cash. In other words... it seems impossible to imagine that The Dark Tower will be built at Universal. The whole thing is now turning into a very familiar story for King/Dark Tower fans who have already seen
Lost creator
J.J. Abrams fail in the recent years to bring Roland's epic journey to The Dark Tower to the big screen.
The writing for this expected decision was probably on the wall
this past Monday when
Debbie Liebling, Universal's President of Production was fired after a two year string of risky, ambitious and left-field projects that crashed and burned at the box office and cost the studio a shit load of money. Those films included
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Your Highness, The Wolf Man, Land of the Lost, Green Zone and even what on paper should have been a banker - a re-teaming of Gladiator duo
Ridley Scott &
Russell Crowe in a
Robin Hood epic - all of which were high-profile flops. Not even a final triumphant with
Fast Five breaking records as the highest ever opening weekend at the studio just 24 hours earlier was to save her and with a new brass in, the days of expensive passion projects for directors, no matter how accomplished, just seem long-gone. Ask
Guillermo Del Toro what he thinks of Universal's new regime, for example. Despite a decade ago a precedent being set for studio brass having the balls to think bigger with their adaptations in the light of
The Lord of the Rings' success, Universal are simply sick of losing money and are in no moods for risks anymore. With a t.v. series having to be put into production likely before The Gunslinger has even hit the screens, the potential for further ploughing money into a risk project was simply too great. Though Variety do tell us that for now at least Universal is still a go-project and no final decision has been made but I think the message is resoundingly clear today.
The Dark Tower, at Universal at least, is likely to be no more. As for where it could go next? Well it's said Universal paid $5 million for the rights to The Dark Tower (which seems odd to me giving that Abrams only paid $19 for the rights from King a few years back) and Ron Howard, Akiva Goldsman and Javier Bardem are expected to have big pay-day contracts - so there's definitely a scenario here that it may not end up anywhere. If it does, I imagine the epic plan will be condensed and a 'one film at a time' approach would be taken and perhaps that is wise. What we do know for sure is that Warner Bros are in early development on
an adaptation of King's famous post-apocalyptic novel The Stand and are likely to be interested, and Howard has good contacts at Sony where he made the Dan Brown adaptations. And yet for the overly optimistic, perhaps a comprise over budget and of maybe how many films are needed to tell the story could be reached and perhaps The Gunslinger might yet see the light of day on May 17th, 2013? Shouldn't be long until we hear for definite.