When one of your favorite director/creator teams talk about working on turning one of your favorite book series into movies immediately after finishing work on one of your favorite television shows, you tend to think you’ve drifted off to sleep at the computer and had a vivid and wildly fantastic dream. But I think I’m still awake.
According to MTV Movies, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, the co-creators of Lost, are starting to talk seriously about turning Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series into movies. It won’t be happening quite yet, Abrams being busy on lots of other projects and Lindelof having the mammoth task of trying to wrap Lost up in a fitting manner. But it is going to happen… at some point.
Abrams said recently:
“Damon Lindelof and I talked to Mr. King. We got the rights for ['Dark Tower'] as a film. Damon is obviously still on ‘Lost’ and we’ve been working on ‘Star Trek’ together. As soon as ‘Lost’ is done, hopefully we’ll begin tackling that.”
Lindelof has also spoken about the future project in the past, saying:
“We’re just so focused on finishing ‘Lost’ that it’s really hard to think about anything else. The last thing we want to think about is how to adapt a seven book series of, you know, basically the writer who we admire the most and look up to most and has inspired our work the most, and do anything with that. I think that it’s such a daunting task. We have a pretty daunting task in front of us ourselves [with the end of 'Lost'].”
“There are always ‘Dark Tower’ conversations, but the figuring out of what this will look like as a movie has not begun. If ‘The Dark Tower’ were in the right hands, I would love to see seven movies executed just right. But you have to get people to see the first one to get them to come and see the second one.”
Seven movies would seem fitting for such an epic series of books but I can’t see it happening. No studio in their right mind would sign up for such an undertaking, one which would cost a fortune and have no real marker with which to look back on as proof it would work. Sure, series such as the Harry Potter books cover that many films but this would be a different prospect altogether.
Much more likely for me would be an extended trilogy of movies, very much in the mold of Peter Jackson’s The Lord Of The Rings. If The Dark Tower were done right then a trilogy of movies could do as well as if not better than LOTR.
Regardless, the fact is this is being talked about, which is brilliant in its own right. I just hope this happens in my lifetime.
