Good news for Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: Carrie’s Mike Flanagan shares exciting TV update

Here we go again — Stephen King's The Dark Tower is back in the spotlight, and this time, horror maestro Mike Flanagan is steering the ship. If you remember the 2017 attempt from Sony, you'll know the bar for improvement is shockingly low, but Flanagan might just be the one chap who can pull this madness off.

Flanagan's Ambitious Plans

Mike Flanagan, currently fresh off the promo circuit for his new adaptation of Carrie, has recently dropped a few tidbits about his Dark Tower series while bantering with fans on Bluesky. He made no bones about the scale of the project, calling it the biggest thing he’s ever tackled. Considering his track record isn’t exactly small potatoes — Hill House, Midnight Mass, all that Netflix creepfest business — that says something. Flanagan’s already wrapped up the script for the first series and even got a personal thumbs-up from King himself.

While chatting with his followers on Bluesky, Flanagan said, "It's the biggest thing I've ever worked on, but we're making progress."

The show is still hovering in development limbo, without an official green light from any streaming giant. That said, Flanagan has hinted that Prime Video could well be the eventual home, which ought to suit a sprawling fantasy-western like this far better than a rushed film ever could.

The Challenge of Adaptation

Adapting King's intricate, eight-novel saga is an absolute beast of a job — something Sony spectacularly fumbled with their 2017 film (remember Idris Elba as Roland and, er... that was about the high point). That ill-fated movie adaptation did little more than annoy both critics and fans, tanking at the box office and dashing hopes for further instalments. So Flanagan quietly secured the TV rights in 2022, and is starting from scratch.

He’s planning five full series to cover the main arc, capped off with two standalone films to polish off the story — a mammoth effort, frankly, but perhaps finally the justice King’s “magnum opus” deserves. Even Flanagan himself admits just getting this project moving is a different beast to his previous work. In one interview, he described it as "one of the most complicated properties to get started," and said pushing it to green-light is a lengthy, tangled process.

• The Gunslinger (1982)
• The Drawing of the Three (1987)
• The Waste Lands (1991)
• Wizard and Glass (1997)
• Wolves of the Calla (2003)
• Song of Susannah (2004)
• The Dark Tower (2004)
• The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012)

The Dark Tower saga spans eight novels, starting with The Gunslinger and concluding with The Wind Through the Keyhole, published over a three-decade stretch.

So, the wait drags on, but with Flanagan at the helm and King apparently in his corner, this could actually be the version that sticks.