Following years of anticipating the upcoming Stephen King movie, fans were left exceptionally disappointed in 2017 watching Nikolaj Arcel’s The Dark Tower – a wretched excuse for an adaptation of the source material – but that crime against pop culture will soon hopefully be righted. In late 2022, it was officially announced that Mike Flanagan acquired the rights to the beloved series of King books, and he plans to adapt it a series that will run for “at least five seasons.” The filmmaker – responsible for two of the best King movies of all time – is presently focused on his new contribution to the Exorcist franchise (which is set with a March 2026 release date), but he has promised that the movie and show are co-existing in development.
So, when can we expect to see The Dark Tower? What is the show going to be about? And what is Mike Flanagan’s vision for the source material? We’ve put together this feature to answer all of those questions and more, and we will continue to update it as we learn more about the series.
When Is The Release Date For Mike Flanagan’s The Dark Tower?
There is no set release date for The Dark Tower adaptation yet.
In a July 2024 interview with the Talking Scared podcast, Mike Flanagan described The Dark Tower as an “oil tanker of a project,” and the scale of it means that it’s taking a minute to properly come together behind the scenes. Because of that extreme effort, Flanagan has found that it’s “perfectly feasible” to work on other projects simultaneously, which is where the aforementioned Exorcist movie comes in. The unfortunate side effect of this is that we really have no idea at all where things stand regarding when we will actually get to see the adaptation – but it will certainly be after March 2026.
Further complicating matters is that it’s unclear where The Dark Tower is going to air/stream. Intrepid Pictures, the company that Mike Flanagan founded with his producing partner Trevor Macy, signed a multiyear overall series deal with Amazon Studios in December 2022, but Deadline has reported that the rights to The Dark Tower were specifically carved out of that deal.
What The Dark Tower Is About
First finding a toe hold in Stephen King’s mind when the author was a teenager, The Dark Tower is the story of Roland Deschain – a gunslinger ever questing to get to and prevent the collapse of a massive black monolith that stands at the center of reality. Adversaries, including The Man In Black a.k.a. Randall Flagg, seek to impede his progress, hoping to see The Dark Tower fall and the universe fall into a chaos known as Discordia.
On his journey through the plane of existence known as Mid-World, Roland finds himself joined by a group of strangers whom he comes to know as family (in the language of the canon, they are his “ka-tet.” All originally hailing from New York before finding themselves brought to Mid-World, this group of protagonists includes a 12-year-old boy named Jake Chambers; a recovering heroin addict named Eddie Dean; an activist with Dissociative Identity Disorder who comes to be known as Susannah Dean; and a raccoon/dog-like animal with limited speech capabilities named Oy.
Mike Flanagan’s History Adapting Stephen King
Should everything go according to plan, The Dark Tower will be the fourth official Stephen King adaptation made by Mike Flanagan. I say “official” because he has described his 2006 short film Oculus: Chapter 3 - The Man With The Plan (via The Kingcast) as a loose take on the King story “1408” (he attempted to acquire the rights to the source material, but they were already owned by Dimension Films, so he worked to create a legally allowable adaptation).
After that, Flanagan spent years bringing a copy of the novel Gerald’s Game to pitch meetings, anticipating the subject to turn to “dream projects.” The idea was repeatedly rejected, but he got his shot to make an adaptation after he forged a successful relationship with Netflix in the original distribution of his film Hush. The movie was not just critically acclaimed, but came out amid the Stephen King renaissance that was kickstarted by Andy Muschietti’s IT: Chapter One in 2017. Fans will note that the film actually includes a direct reference to The Dark Tower.
Mike Flanagan followed that challenge by taking on what many considered an impossible task. The writer/director has hired to make Doctor Sleep – a sequel to The Shining based on the book of the same name, which was written by King with clear touches of spite originating from his famed dislike of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie. Flanagan was given the job of somehow marrying Kubrick’s work with the sequel novel, and while the film wasn’t a box office success upon release, it has been critically lauded and found an audience on home video/streaming.
The upcoming Stephen King movie The Life Of Chuck is Mike Flanagan’s latest adaptation of the author’s work – and a totally different feature than both Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. Starring Tom Hiddleston, the film is based on the novella of the same name, which traces the life of a man backwards chronologically from his death of brain cancer at the age of 39 to his experience growing up raised by his grandparents.
Mike Flanagan’s Vision For The Dark Tower
This probably won’t surprise you: Mike Flanagan’s vision for The Dark Tower is to bring to life what Stephen King put on the page. His previous King adaptations have certainly made deviations from the source material, but the filmmaker has undying respect for King’s storytelling, and that respect has repeatedly been illustrated via faithfulness.
In October 2022, Mike Flanagan explained that he imagines his Dark Tower adaptation to open precisely as the book does, with the line, “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” This on-screen text would be followed by a “Lawrence Of Arabia-esque landscape with a silhouette in the distance just making his way across the hardpan.” After that? In Flanagan’s words,
We would build it out from there in order to the end.
It should go without saying at this point that The Dark Tower is in good hands.
How To Read Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series
There are a total of eight The Dark Tower books, which includes seven main novels and an interquel/midquel that was published after the completion of the main series. The first four – The Gunslinger, The Drawing Of The Three, The Waste Lands, and Wizard And Glass – were published sporadically between 1982 and 1997, but Stephen King felt particularly compelled to finish the story following the roadside accident that nearly took his life in June 1999.
The last three books in the main run of the series – Wolves Of The Calla, Song Of Susannah, and The Dark Tower – were written successively, and all three arrived in bookstores between November 2003 and September 2004. The seven novels are meant to be read in release order.
In 2012, Stephen King published The Wind Through The Keyhole – a new story including the Dark Tower’s ka-tet. It’s set in between the events of Wizard And Glass and Wolves Of The Calla, but it’s meant to be read after completing the seven other books first. All eight tomes are available for purchase in both paperback and hardcover editions.
Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more updates about The Dark Tower, and for a weekly roundup of everything going on in the world of Stephen King, check out my Thursday column The King Beat.
