When I wrote about the upcoming film based on the Oujia board game last week undergoing a massive budget cut, I mentioned other signs that Hollywood is finally having to cope with the recession. I completely forgot to mention one sign of that being true is when Universal put the brakes on the three film, two television series mega-project adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower back in July. However, director Ron Howard and producers Brian Grazer and Akiva Goldsman (who also wrote the script) vowed to soldier on with the project, even saying that they’d make the seven (soon to be eight) as a NetFlix series if they had to (that is, as long as they could get the financing, which was the whole reason Universal passed on the project in the first place).
That financing might be on its way — Deadline reports that Warner Bros. is close to signing a deal to resurrect the project. There’s no word whether the project will maintain the same 3 film / 2 television series format, but the fact that Warner Bros. owns HBO is a very good sign that the television portion remains intact. I would say screw the whole film idea and just do a lengthy HBO series of it, but I imagine WB is seeking a long-running franchise to replace its now-concluded Harry Potter cash cow and the soon-to-be-concluded Christopher Nolan Batman movies. It’s also up in the air whether Javier Bardem is still committed to playing Roland, the lead character, who is a knight-like gunslinger on a quest to find the mysterious Dark Tower, but of course it is so much more than that.
Again, I’ve been game to see a Dark Tower movie for years, but, of course, it has to be done right. Deadline also reports that Stephen King himself is also producing the film, which I’d like to think is a good sign. However, sometimes when King has gotten involved in his adaptations the results have been less-than-stellar, so let’s hope for the best here.
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