King wants THE DARK TOWER made into big movies

By Matt Holmes /

My first concern when I heard that J.J. Abrams was looking to strike a deal to adapt The Dark Tower series of novels into a live action medium, was that he would make them into watered down feature tv shows, which would inevitably lose some of the great material of the books. I mean you don't make Lord of the Rings into three or four 1 tv length features. You don't make Harry Potter into 7 hour-longs. This is The Dark Tower, which could be as epic and as successful as the above movies, which is why it needs to be 7 cinematic 2 hour+ movies. Although I would settle for 3 or 4 if they are like 3 hour in length, as long as they don't leave to much out! The good news after reading Quint's interview with Stephen King over at AICN, is that the writer agrees with me and so does Abrams himself.... "It oughta be movies. It€™s gotta be big. I€™d like to see it done (that way). I€™m not going to close any doors because that€™s not my way€(Abrams and Damon Lindelof€™s) impulse, too, is to go with the big screen. JJ has a deal with Paramount Pictures. I know that he€™s talked with somebody at Paramount and said, €œYeah, it probably oughta be pictures.€ But why close any doors?" It's a great interview, which you can read in full by clicking here but there isn't really much more on the cinematic future of The Dark Tower just yet. It seems to be that it's in the very early stages, and the people involved are just trying to underpin exactly how they want to tackle the epic. Abrams has become a very powerful man who is in charge of two franchises I dearly love. Star Trek he better not fuck up because seriously, this could be the medium's last chance for some time if it isn't made correctly, I'm talking probably a decade in the wilderness. If he does screw up Star Trek, then of course I will become as nervous and agitated as an addict who can't get his latest drug fix, I will be shaking in the night and having headaches during the day with the worry that The Dark Tower will be his next big screw up! source - aicn