Mike Flanagan Officially Confirms His Plan for The Dark Tower TV Series Adaptation

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series has long been considered tough to adapt: With a complex multiverse of worlds spread across several lengthy novels, where do you even begin? According to Mike Flanagan, the man behind TV series like The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and Prime Video’s recent adaptation of Carrie, the answer is surprisingly simple: you begin at the start.

In an interview with The Process Unlocked, Flanagan revealed new details on his previously announced adaptation of The Dark Tower series. When asked about the most challenging work he'd adapted, Flanagan surprised the interviewer by saying Warhammer was the trickiest.

Mike Flanagan is confident about adapting The Dark Tower

Flanagan explained that The Dark Tower wasn't the most difficult work he’s tackled because King’s novels already do a great job of bringing newcomers into the story. “You do the books. Stephen King is genius in how he structures The Dark Tower,” Flanagan said. “It’s one of the most perfect opening lines of any book. ‘The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.’ It’s two characters, there’s a clear objective — one is running away, one is pursuing — and it’s a desert, there’s nothing else to look at. It’s so simple and so clean. On top of that foundation, he adds a universe one brick at a time.”

“The problem with the other approaches is people who try to jump in the middle, or people who try to jump in at a different point,” Flanagan further explained. “Because you can’t throw an audience face-first into this huge universe. It’s overwhelming. King did it right, he walked you in, starting with two people and nothing else, and walks you in one step at a time. So my adaptation was that. It was just doing the books, and doing them in order.” Flanagan’s statement confirms that his adaptation will begin with the first book in the series, 1982’s The Gunslinger, and continue through the rest of the series.

What other details do we know about Mike Flanagan’s The Dark Tower adaptation?

In December 2022, Flanagan announced he had acquired the rights to develop a television series based on the books. Since then, he said he hopes the show will run for five seasons (one for each of the first five books) and close with a pair of movies adapting the last two novels. The show will be produced by Flanagan’s Intrepid Pictures and will be part of Flanagan’s ongoing deal with Prime Video.

As for why the show has taken so long, Flanagan recently explained in an interview with ScreenRant that because The Dark Tower references other Stephen King novels, the legal situation is incredibly messy, and they’ve been workingto acquire the rights to portray many of these characters. “We’re still pushing forward. It’s an oil tanker of a project,” Flanagan said. The Dark Tower already features a 2017 movie adaptation starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, but it seems we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see Roland the Gunslinger return to the screen.