Posted in: Movies, Preview, streaming, TV | Tagged: Mike Flanagan, preview, stephen king, The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower: "I Feel Really Good About Where We Are": Mike Flanagan

Ahead of the SAG-AFTRA & WGA strikes, Mike Flanagan likes where things are at with the adaptation of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series.

It's been nearly two months since we last checked in on how things were looking with Mike Flanagan, Trevor Macy, and Intrepid Pictures' upcoming adaptation of bestselling author Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" novels as a television series (along with two stand-alone films set within the universe) – and things were sounding pretty "optimistic" (Flanagan's word). Now, with both the SAG-AFTRA & WGA strikes well underway and showing no signs of ending anytime soon short of divine intervention, we were surprised that Flanagan would have anything to offer in the form of an update – thankfully, Flanagan proved us wrong during a recent visit to Fangoria's The Kingcast podcast.

"I feel really good about where we are," Flanagan shared during the episode. "Oddly, where we are at the moment is completely frozen because of the strike, but we had a wonderful Spring with [series development], and we're making enormous progress on it. And I have every reason to believe that on the other side of the strike, it's gonna be priority number one." And Flanagan's positivity didn't end there, with the filmmaker dropping some promising teases. "We have great partners on it that I can't talk about, and we've got some really exciting actors circling on it that I can't talk about," Flanagan added. "And we have some potentially groundbreaking approaches to the filmmaking of it that I just can't really talk about … but what I can say is that my fears that any momentum we had developed was gonna be obliterated [by SAG-AFTRA & WGA strikes], well, I don't really worry about that."

Mike Flanagan on Stephen King's The Dark Tower

"Predating our deal with Amazon, we acquired the rights to 'The Dark Tower,' which, if you know anything about me, you know has been my Holy Grail of a project for most of my life," Flanagan revealed during the duo's discussion of future projects with Deadline Hollywood at the end of last year. "We actually have those rights carved out of our Amazon deal, which doesn't mean that they can't or won't get behind it at some point — you don't know. But that's something we've been developing ourselves and are really passionate about finally getting it up on its feet at some point." Here are some of the highlights, including how far along the project is in the development stage, that the project is aside from their deal with Amazon, and if they've spoken with King about their efforts.

Flanagan on Where Things Are at With "The Dark Tower": "I wrote a pilot; we view it as a series that's going at least five seasons. And having lived with this project as long as I have, I have an enormous amount of it worked out in my brain. But I have a pilot script I'm thrilled with and a very detailed outline for the first season, and a broader outline for the subsequent seasons. I think eventually, if we're able to get it going, there are some other writers I want to fold into that process whom I've worked with before; I think they would be really fabulous for a very small, intimate writers' room where we can continue to break it."

Stephen King Is "Very, Very Supportive and Very Excited": "This [The Dark Tower] happened because I sent him a very, very detailed outline of what I wanted to do with it. And it was in response to that, that he gave us the rights. A project like this, I wouldn't want to be involved in it at all if we were taking it in a direction that was going to be blasphemous to the Stephen King material, but he's been very, very supportive and very excited about what we'd like to do with it."

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