Producer Brian Grazer promised in no uncertain terms over the weekend that his and Ron Howard's planned adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower would still happen, and after cutting $45 million out of the movie budget things were looking better than ever (yes, despite the fact that their distributor Universal passed on the project earlier this year). But you may remember the original plan had been for a movie and a TV show adaptation of the sprawling series of novels; when Howard and Grazer first announced their plans they said the series would start with a movie, morph into a TV series, then go back to the movies, then back to TV, and then wrapping up with a third feature film. The guys don't lack for ambition, you have to admit that.
At the time there was no TV network in place to actually air the thing, though HBO seemed pretty much perfect for it; now Grazer tells MTV that HBO indeed will be airing the series, and even though they don't know who will be putting the movie out there, he reiterates that "we're going to do that movie." You can see it for yourself in the video below:
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In a way, this is a relief-- if Grazer and Howard only got funding for one movie and tried to go ahead that way, they could risk really screwing up a massively complicated story that will take a long time to tell. And it really seems more likely that an HBO series-- with room to appeal to niche audiences and build viewers over time-- will happen, rather than a movie that has to live or die on opening weekend. Are you guys encouraged to hear that HBO will be tackling the Dark Tower? Or have we been through this speculation so much that you won't believe it until you see it.
