10 Terrible 2017 Films That Will Get Sequels Anyway
2. The Dark Tower
Many fans tried to tell Sony Pictures that Stephen King's sprawling opus The Dark Tower is unfilmable, while others warned them it was better suited to TV. These words of wisdom went unheeded, the saga was adapted, and it was a total car crash.
Troubled production didn't help its cause, but Dark Tower wasn't just watered down for cinema, it was drowned within an inch of its life. The studio attempted to cram one of the most complex literary series of the modern age into a lean hour and a half, sacrificing most of its lore and weirdness in the process.
Not only was The Dark Tower critically mauled, it underwhelmed at the box office too, making $111.8 million off a budget of $60 million. That makes it profitable, sure, but a million miles away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe rival Sony was hoping for.
Nevertheless, the movie could still get a sequel in some form, and it's more likely to come in the shape of a TV series than another big-screen outing. The original plan was to adapt Dark Tower as a cross-medium franchise spanning films and tie-in TV shows. That's not happening any longer, but a fan survey conducted by the project's producers last August suggests the demand for a television series is still there.
Major course correction is needed, but Sony will likely have another stab at Dark Tower in the future, rather than allow its rights deal for the property to lapse.