Mike Flanagan Reveals the Reason Why His Adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’ Cannot Be Faithful to the Novels

Mike Flanagan, the horror master behind Stephen King adaptations like Doctor Sleep and most recently, The Life of Chuck, is nowhere near to exiting the universe of the bestselling horror author. Not only is he going to adapt King’s first novel, Carrie, into a miniseries for Prime Video, but Flanagan is also set to adapt King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower book series. The big question on everyone’s mind is, will Flanagan be able to faithfully adapt King’s masterpiece?

Constant Readers, a.k.a. the readers who follow King’s career know that calling it a challenge is an understatement, as The Dark Tower is as ambitious as literary works like Tolkien’s saga The Lord of the Rings. While the director has gained the trust of audiences, as well as King’s, he has admitted that the TV show can’t be completely faithful to the novels that blend many genres, like fantasy, Western and horror. It’s not that he doesn’t have the intention, but rather because the rights to several characters are held by different companies.

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Flanagan appeared on the podcast The Kingcast, where he mainly spoke about The Life of Chuck, and then shared whatever he could about the upcoming Dark Tower series. The project is taking its time, but don’t think for one minute that Flanagan isn’t working on it: “I know it looks like no progress, but that is not true. It’s all moving forward, it’s moving at the only pace this thing can move at, because it weighs so damn much.” The director continues:

“Just the rights situation with this story. It covers so many other things that are owned by so many other people, pulling it all in and negotiating that stuff literally can take more than a year. Just with the lawyers.

“That hasn’t stopped me from working on the scripts, discussing casting and other logistical things.”

If There’s a Filmmaker Capable of Bringing a Good Version of Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’ to Life, That’s Mike Flanagan

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Flanagan then goes down the rabbit hole in the podcast, explaining the connections that exist within the Dark Tower universe. The book series is central to King’s collection, featuring several crossovers, with the author even including himself in the last half of the series. You truly have to be a connoisseur of King’s entire universe to even think of adapting it, and Flanagan has shown he’s the right man. The director said the following when addressing the character connections, and yes, it does get complicated:

“You have to get into Father Callahan, like that’s not negotiable. Which means that you’re going to Warner Brothers, cause they’ve got Salem’s Lot. Crimson King is actually a whole different thing. ‘Low Men in Yellow Coats’ also, you got to go to Warner Brothers, because when they optioned the story, that was also included, whether they put it in the movie or not. It can’t be what’s in the book, it’s not logistically possible. And I think to the cinematic audience, they’re not going to pick up on Insomnia the way Constant Readers are. What you need from that is a character with psychic ability, who’s going to be brought in as one of the Breakers. What are the other characters in the King universe that could fulfill a role like that and get the fans excited, even though you’re changing it?

“For me, I’m like what about Abra Stone [from Doctor Sleep]? When you go into the what if you can’t get Father Callahan, who can fill that role? Who’s a character that’s presumed dead in another King story who can come into this story and have a similar arc of redemption? Do you go to Dick Hallorann [from The Shining]? I’m just saying, what do you do here? How do you make it so the King fans will lean forward and be excited about this particular change, but that people who haven’t read the books will be able to recognize it from their cinematic experience? That’s part of what makes this thing so goddamned hard to do.”

Source: The Kingcast

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