Yesterday the Internet began buzzing from an interview snippet with producer Brian Grazer discussing the stalled production of The Dark Tower, a multi-platform adaptation of Stephen King‘s seven-part fantasy western epic. The project was originally planned as three films with Universal Pictures with a television series expected to fill in the gaps in-between the films as there was simply too much material in King’s book to satisfy only a trilogy of films and it sounds like they aren’t deviating from those plans, but where the films and TV shows will be housed remains up in the air.
The project, as it was presented, fell apart when remained optimistic saying attached director Ron Howard was “trying to get outside financing to make it, and distribute it through a major studio.” Well, it seems there is some movement on that front.
First off, Grazer was quoted by The Playlist saying, “We found a way to cut $45 million out of the budget without changing the scope and actually giving it a good ending… In the $140 million draft, the ending wasn’t quite as satisfying. Now, we’ve got $45 million, $50 million out of the way and a really satisfying ending. It’s gonna get made.”
Okay, so it’s going to get made and on a $90-95 million budget, and I have to assume he’s referring to the first film in this case, but where will it get made?
In speaking with MTV he says, “We’re going to do that movie… We’ll do the TV with HBO and the movie… to be determined.” Grazer’s pause before “to be determined” leads me to believe there is a leading candidate for the feature film portion of the project but he didn’t want to say too much, but he is clearly confident in HBO and also says he believes they’ll be able to maintain Javier Bardem as the story’s lead character, the gunslinger Roland Deschain.
You can watch the video with Grazer below where he also briefly mentions the potential “Arrested Development” film.
