The Dark Tower: a Movie Trilogy and a TV Series!

Big news for fans of Stephen King's epic gunslinger book series The Dark Tower:  Deadline is reporting that Universal Pictures and NBC-TV have closed a deal that will bring the seven (and soon to be eight)-part series not only to theaters as a trilogy of films but that it will also be coming to network TV as a weekly series.

Both the first film and the first season of the TV series will be directed by Ron Howard (his first TV directing gig since the 80s), from scripts written by Akiva Goldsman.  Howard's Imagine Entertainment will produce.

The Dark Tower is sort of a cowboy-meets-Lord-of-the-Rings fantasy story about the character of Roland Deschain, the last of a knightly order of gunslingers who seeks the Dark Tower to save his crumbling mythical world.  And it's written by Stephen King, so you can just envision how twisted the whole thing gets.  There has also been a popular Marvel Comics series based around the original seven books.

For awhile, it appeared that Lost co-creators JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were set to adapt the series for the film version.  King even optioned The Dark Tower to them for only $19, which, if you've read the books, is significant to the story (King himself was huge Lost fan).  But even they had some trouble sorting out the complicated plotline for a film adaptation, and the trio was reluctant to commit to such a huge project so soon after the completion of Lost.  They dropped out of the project in April, and Howard & crew jumped on board.

It sounds like a massive project - with a season of the TV series to follow each of the first two films, although there is no confirmation as to exactly how many episodes each season of the series will have.  But it's a huge property, so it looks like they're certainly going to do their damndest to do it justice.  At least they better - I know too many Dark Tower fans who will be pissed if they don't.