Once Stephen King fans realized that Nikolaj Arcel's film The Dark Tower wouldn't be a straight adaptation of the author's works, pulling instead from the entire series instead of translating The Gunslinger novel, the questions started flowing about what would be kept, and what would be cut. With the film out, readers know that a lot of changes were made. But were there things that King himself wished made it into the final cut of the movie? We had the opportunity to ask King this very question, and he recently told CinemaBlend about two things he wished made it into The Dark Tower. King said:
I would love to see those doors into our world. There's some of that in this movie. I would love to see Roland on the beach with those lobsters.
The two instances that Stephen King mentions in that answer belong, primarily, to the events of the second book in the longer The Dark Tower series, titled The Drawing of the Three. In that novel, Roland Deschain of Gilead (played in the film by Idris Elba) is attacked by lobster-like creatures on a mysterious beach. During the skirmish, Roland loses two fingers on his right hand -- an injury that plagues him for the duration of that novel. Later in the book, Roland must step through three floating doors that carry him into a version of our world in different time periods. From these worlds, he extracts people who are supposed to help him on his mission to reach the Tower. King likely had a vision of floating doors on a desolate beach, but we never got that imagery in Nikolaj Arcel's film. They looked a little bit like this in the novels:
Those associated with this first film make it clear that The Drawing of the Three should be on the docket for a follow-up movie, though the conversation about a TV series that is led by The Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara call is a prequel, focusing on the Young Roland story told in Wizards and Glass. That makes as much sense as doing a Dark Tower movie and pulling references from every single book, instead of the first. In further elaborating on the movie, Stephen King told CinemaBlend:
There are things I think the hardcore fans are going to wish were in the movie, and all I can say is, if the movie's a success, there will be a sequel.
The question no remains, did The Dark Tower earn enough to warrant a sequel. The jury is still out. The movie opened to $19M this weekend in the States, which is low for a summer blockbuster. But Audience scores were better than the critical averages, the production budget was kept low on The Dark Tower, and international numbers could salvage the experiment.
Would the TV series come next? A traditional sequel? Time will tell, I suppose.
