THE DARK TOWER collapses at Warner Bros

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is one of the greatest pieces of sci-fi/fantasy literature ever written, in my opinion. As such, I have an equal combination of hope and dread for director Ron Howard’s proposed adaptation of the series.

He at least realized that the story is so epic in scope, that just a couple of feature films would never work. Which is why he proposed the ambitious plan of 3 feature films, with 2 big budget TV series in between them.

But apparently that may just have been too ambitious for the guys over at Warner Bros, who have now passed on Howard’s pitch.

This is a major blow as it was sort of considered that Warner Bross may be the project’s final saving grace, after other major studio Universal also gave the project the cold shoulder last year. At that time Javier Bardiem was cast in the lead role of of the gunslinger Roland Deschain, which may have been an inspired bit of casting, but probably didn’t have the box office clout needed to make this happen.

Since then, Bardiem had pulled out and it was recently reported that Russell Crowe would now be stepping into Roland’s boots. But it seems that not even the involvement of a thrice nominated Oscar winner and massive box-office draw card was enough to get the greenlight on this one.

With both WB and Universal out of the picture, it seems that none of the other major studios would probably touch this one now, but there is still a glimmer of hope though. Media Rights Capital, the group behind the money for recent comedy smash TED, as well as Neil Blomkamp’s upcoming Elysium, are heavy in negotiations to provide the financial backing for this one as their CEO Modi Wiczyk is apparently a huge Dark Tower fanboy.

The only problem is that MRC normally uses Universal to distribute the films they produce, and we already know how they feel about this. So either MRC gets Universal to change their minds, or somehow convinces another studio to release the films and produce the series, otherwise this Tower will just come crumbling down.

Last Updated: August 21, 2012