Dark Tower TV Series: 9 Things It Must Do To Save The Franchise

Maybe the piffling runtime was to blame, but The Dark Tower movie felt reluctance to truly embrace Mid-World, celebrate its unique culture and plumb the depths of the world Stephen King created.

Sony played it safe, with the mind-boggling metaphysics and otherworldlyness of this post-apocalyptic fantasy land replaced by largely vanilla visuals and a tone more fitting of a superhero blockbuster.

The TV show must channel the weirdness and gritty Western elements of the novels, not least because these are prevalent in Wizard and Glass, which has Roland flanked by two other post-apocalyptic cowboys for most of the story and features a six-legged mutant cat called Musty.

The series should play out like a dark, twisted version of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, with added horror, pop culture references and a generous helping of WTF thrown in for good measure.

This harks back to the points about the show needing to be more adult and closer to the books, but it isn't just about adapting them page for page of tackling the graphic scenes head on, the tone also needs to be right.