News began to emerge
last week that the now cautious major Universal were starting to get cold feet over their planned multi-format t.v. & film adaptation of
Stephen King's multi-genre book series
The Dark Tower and all the signs pointed towards a dumping of perhaps the most ambitious film adaptation since
Peter Jackson pitched
The Lord of the Rings franchise in the late 90's. But in an unexpected move,
Deadline reported on Friday that Universal have granted a stay of execution for the 3 film, 2 t.v. series project - giving director-producer
Ron Howard and writer-producer
Akiva Goldsman a little more time to tone down the scale of 10 hour+ project and heavily reduce the spiralling budget with production on the first film pushed back from this summer to a February 2012 start. Universal must greenlight the film by July and commit to the early 2012 start or otherwise lose the rights of the novel back to King and Howard/Goldsman who could pitch elsewhere. Clearly Universal believe there's a huge financial hit brewing with The Dark Tower and I imagine they are cautious about letting other studios get their hands on it incase they make it into a success. For now the May 2013 release date for the first film stays intact as does the attachment of lead
Javier Bardem whose GIGANTIC bummer pay deal for the unprecedented commitment to such a large project at the peak of his career is unlikely to be culled. Where the costs will be trimmed now is anyone's guess but I wouldn't be surprised if either the number of films are reduced - or at least not wholly committed to until
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger is a success. Meanwhile, the
chances of Javier Bardem appearing in
Sam Mendes' still untitled and conspicuously quiet
Bond 23 have shot up now he has a free 2011 schedule. That can only be a good thing - but as The Dark Tower is my favourite literary series of all time - let's hope Howard/Goldsman/Bardem/Universal manage to find out a way to make it work.