Akiva Goldsman provided some insight into the fate of the massive plans for an expanded universe of The Dark Tower television and film projects that never came to fruition.
Goldsman both produced and co-wrote the screenplay for the 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King's hugely successful book of the same name. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he explained, "I have a lot of regret about the parts of that that didn't work out. Our best version of that existed well before television-movie crossovers and streaming were a thing."
Despite the involvement of Idris Elba as Roland Deschain, the last of the Gunslingers, and Matthew McConaughey as Roland's nemesis, the film was largely panned by critics for deviating too far from the source material. Sequels based on the next books in the series were initially planned but were then scrapped due to the poor reception of the initial film.
"I have a lot of affection for the books that didn't end up onscreen," said Goldsman. "And Ron Howard had this idea of what could be done across platforms — he didn't touch the movie, but sometimes things slip away."
A planned television series had originally picked up steam before the film's release. It was scheduled to premiere in 2018, then was delayed until 2019 to distance itself from the film after its poor reception. Several stars were announced in featured roles and Glen Mazzara was at the helm as showrunner, but the Amazon project was finally canceled in early 2020 due to conflicting programs and issues with the budget.
Goldsman did still have some positivity left for the original film: "There are things about that [film] I still admire, and Idris Elba [played a] really wonderful Roland. I think there were too many different points of view — mine included — when it came to figuring out how to tell a cogent story onscreen, and we could have done better."
He will return to the works of Stephen King with an upcoming remake of Firestarter that he and others feel will be truer to the original book than the 1984 film starring Drew Barrymore was. The Scott Teems scripted movie is scheduled to start filming in about three months.
Directed by Nikolaj Arcel, The Dark Tower stars Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Abbey Lee, Katheryn Winnick, Fran Kranz, Claudia Kim and Jackie Earle Haley.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter