10 Terrible Movies That Should Have Stayed In Development Hell

8. The Dark Tower

Will Smith Gemini Man
Warner Bros.

The Dark Tower is regarded by many as Stephen King's magnum opus, an intricately-detailed series of novels with a rich and complex mythology. So it seemed obvious that after finally escaping the clutches of development hell, the movie would end up being a kid-centric adventure that ran for a brisk 95 minutes, right?

At this point, the project had been in development for ten years, initially with JJ Abrams at the helm, before the Bad Robot head honcho dropped out and The Dark Tower moved over to Universal. Ron Howard then spent a long time trying to get it made as either a feature film or a TV series, before he too decided that it really wasn't worth the increasing hassle.

From out of nowhere, the fantasy epic was suddenly fast-tracked into production and was in theaters before we knew it. The $66m budget seemed nowhere near high enough to be able to do any sort of justice to the source material, and it didn't. The Dark Tower seemed like a rush-job designed to capitalize on the recent Stephen King resurgence rather than the result of ten years of blood, sweat and tears.

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