February 28th, 2007

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Books, Movies
3 Comments »

Will J.J. Abrams Adapt The Dark Tower?

I’m quite a fan of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower books (so, I recall, is Cory Doctorow). I’ve had this bookmarked for a while, but I’ve been meaning to mention that J. J. Abrams is now associated with adapting the books:

We have been unable to determine whether Dark Tower will be a film project or a TV miniseries, although the latter is a more likely prospect given the complex nature of King’s seven-book series. Given Abrams’ success on the small screen — and King’s well known love for the Abrams-produced TV series Lost — the tube seems a better fit for The Dark Tower.

I think it’s got to be a mini-series–the books are too epic in scope for one movie, and who’d be willing to bet on three movies on a relatively unknown property. We’re not talking about Spiderman here. Abrams sounds like a good fit–his work on Lost and Alias ought to help him with the large cast and mad plot.

A while back I speculated on who should play the lead character in the books–Roland the Gunslinger. My friend Matthew produced the best answer I’ve heard in Viggo Mortensen.

Having never run, you know, a fan site, a year and a half ago I registered www.devilgrass.com, thinking it would be a good domain for a site about the movie. Maybe if I have some free time in Malta I’ll start that badboy up. There don’t appear to be any around yet.

Comments: 3 Responses so far

Thomas
February 28th, 2007
11:14 pm

I’m not even sure that three movies would do the job.

If all seven books were to be made into television and done well, that might take hundreds of hours. It could easily be an entire television series, five years. I mean, how long were “The Stand” and “IT” when they were made into miniseries? Dark Tower is many times the scope of either of those works.

[Reply]

Metro
March 1st, 2007
2:03 pm

Has King finished writing that thing yet?

I love the guy. Screw literature (for a given value of literature), he knows how to tell a story the way Shakespeare could write a play.

But damn! I lost interest when “Wizard and Glass” turned out to be a purposeless flashback. I tried to stay with it, but when I discovered that he’d written himself into the last one that came out, I dropped it.

There are few surer signs that a writer is losing it that an appearance in his own books. Heinlein just barely held on before exiting gracefully. Clive Cussler sank foaming into the depths, and I think King’s teetering on the edge of the plank.

It’s the same reason politicians should be put out to pasture at seventy. They start forgetting there’s an audience out here.

[Reply]

Malta news at Kaizenlog
March 3rd, 2007
12:02 am

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