According to Deadline, Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor), after three years of announcing it, is much closer to bringing a series adaptation of  Stephen King‘s (It: Welcome to Derry, The Running Man) The Dark Tower to life. The horror film maker called the upcoming series an “oil tanker” as he shared an update on his and Trevor Macy’s Intrepid Pictures take on King’s series of books that were released from 1982 to 2012.

“It’s moving,” Flanagan told Empire Magazine via Deadline. “We’ve got a lot of scripts done for it. It’s the first priority.”

As per Deadline, following the release of the 2017 adaptation by Nikolaj Arcel (Riders of Justice, The Promised Land), Flanagan said, “We can’t let that be the final word. We really can’t.” The film starred Idris Elba (Heads of State, A House of Dynamite) and Matthew McConaughey (A Time to Kill, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) and currently has a 16% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

According to Deadline, Flanagan told Deadline in 2022 exclusively that he’d completed a pilot script for his adaptation of The Dark Tower , which he plans to run for five seasons, followed by two stand-alone movies.

“You’re the first person we’re saying it to, but yes,” he said at the time via Deadline. “Predating our deal with Amazon, we acquired the rights to The Dark Tower, which if you know anything about me, you know it has been my Holy Grail of a project for most of my life.”

Flanagan added via Deadline. “We actually have those rights carved out of our Amazon deal, which doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t get behind it at some point — you don’t know. But that’s something we’ve been developing ourselves and are really passionate about finally getting it up on its feet at some point.”

As per Deadline, Amazon Studios previously opted not to pick up a Dark Tower series from executive producer and showrunner Glen Mazzara (Crash, Hancock 2) and MRC in 2020.