The Dark Tower TV Series Dead At Amazon

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The Dark Tower TV Series Dead At Amazon

Amazon is no longer moving forward with the TV show adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower novels. Although studios and networks have never really stopped turning King's stories into movies and television series, they certainly stepped up their efforts after the first IT film became a massive box office success in 2017. However, just a month before Pennywise made the jump to the big screen, Sony released its own King adaptation in the form of The Dark Tower, with Idris Elba playing the gunslinger Roland and Matthew McConaughey bringing The Man in Black to life from King's original western, fantasy, sci-fi, and horror-blending novels.

After The Dark Tower flopped with critics and disappointed at the box office, its planned TV show tie-in was refashioned as a fresh take on the property. Developed by showrunner Glen Mazzara (The Walking Dead), The Dark Tower series reportedly takes place long before the events of the film, revealing how Roland (now played by Sam Strike) became a gunslinger and met his infamous arch-enemy (Jasper Pääkkönen) in the first place. Its pilot was previously being developed for Amazon Studios, but that is no longer the case.

According to Deadline, Amazon has now formally passed on The Dark Tower, having already forgone a straight to series order (which is fairly unusual for big-budget genre productions of this kind). The site's sources tell them Amazon's executives felt the show's pilot simply wasn't on the same level as the other costly fantasy novel adaptations - namely, their Wheel of Time and The Lord of the Rings TV shows - the studio currently has in the pipeline.


With Game of Thrones now over, a number of cable networks and streaming series are vying to fill its spot with a mega-popular fantasy epic series of their own. Netflix has already technically beaten its competition to the punch thanks to The Witcher, which premiered in late December and is currently one of the most popular streaming options in the world (though it's not quite as popular as Disney+'s The Mandalorian in the U.S.). Elsewhere, HBO is actively developing the Game of Thrones prequel-spinoff House of the Dragon for release in 2022, and Amazon has its aforementioned Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings shows moving on ahead. Some networks have already given up on trying to win that race, though, with Showtime having passed on The Kingkiller Chronicle TV series just last September.

It's possible The Dark Tower TV show will land on its feet elsewhere, with Deadline reporting MRC is shopping the two scripts that were the basis for Amazon's original pilot pickup. However, the odds aren't necessarily in its favor, now that Amazon has already rejected it. The Dark Tower brand is also somewhat tarnished at the moment because of the movie, which will do little to help the show's case while trying to find a new home. For these reasons, it's best to not start holding your breath for this particular Stephen King TV series to happen just yet.