When it comes to horror these days, few are held in greater esteem than filmmaker Mike Flanagan. “The Haunting of Hill House” and “Midnight Mass” creator has done celebrated adaptations of the works of various famed authors.
One such author is Stephen King whom Flanagan has adapted twice for the screen with the acclaimed movies “Doctor Sleep” and “Gerald’s Game”. With Flanagan out doing promo interviews for “The Midnight Club” series, IGN recently spoke with him about another King work – “The Dark Tower”.
Considered King’s magnum opus, an ambitious multi-film and series plan to adapt the multi-novel fantasy series years ago was scrapped. All we received was a 2017 single film that’s today mostly seen as a major dud that bears little relation to the material.
The books are a western/sci-fi/fantasy hybrid that chronicles the journey of a Clint Eastwood-esque hero named Roland Deschain as he makes his way toward The Dark Tower: a monolith that stands at the center of the universe.
Flanagan tells the outlet that an adaptation of “The Dark Tower” would be his “dream project” and spoke to the outlet about what approach he would take if given the chance:
“What it would look like? It would look like the books… It would be a black screen, and the words ‘The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed’ would come up on silence, and you’d hear the wind, and we’d gradually fade up to this Lawrence Of Arabia-esque landscape with a silhouette in the distance just making his way across the hardpan. And we would build it out from there in order to the end.”
While the previous adaptation disastrously failed, Flanagan says he knows the approach that would work for the material, and it involves simply staying true to it:
“It would just be a question of taking the more fantastic elements that might be harder to connect to – especially where it gets pretty meta at mid-point – and grounding it, just pulling it in. But otherwise, the characters are who they are, the arc is what it is, and I think the way not to do The Dark Tower is to try and turn it into something else – to try and make it Star Wars or make it Lord of the Rings. It’s what it is; what it is is perfect. It’s just as exciting as all of those things and just as immersive.
It’s a story about a tiny group of people, and all the odds in the whole world are against them, and they come together. As long as it’s that, it will be fine. There won’t be a dry eye in the house. Is it a series? Is it a franchise of feature films? I don’t know It’s all of those things; it’s none of them. It would be my Everest to do that, but nothing would make me happier, and god, I hope there’s a chance. I really do.”
Both of the previous Flanagan-directed King adaptations took books that many considered the most difficult (if not impossible) to adapt and turned out excellent results. Flanagan in his time has also seen two prior King-related projects dissolve, including “Revival” and a “The Shining” prequel series.
He’s currently finishing up his “The Fall of the House of Usher” series, which is tipped to be hitting Netflix early-mid 2023.
