Dark Tower TV Series: 9 Things It Must Do To Save The Franchise
5. Fewer Cooks In The Tower's Kitchen
The Dark Tower movie was accused of many things, and one of them was being a convoluted mess. This is generally what happens when a film is sucked in and out of development hell, but there are simple fixes that would have made it more coherent.
For starters, there were clearly too many minds pushing the film in different directions. No fewer than four people shared scripting duties between them - Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen and director Nikolaj Arcel.
Goldsman was involved in the project since 2010 when Ron Howard was in line to direct, with Pinkner heading up a rewrite before Jensen and Arcel joined the team.
While four cooks in the writing kitchen isn't necessarily overkill for a blockbuster movie, it seems excessive for one which clocks in a little over an hour and a half, especially when none of them are on the same page.
The TV show's pilot will likely run for an hour or so, so streamlining in the writing room would go a long way towards coherence here, and could be the difference between scoring a series or Roland firing another round of blanks.