Mike Flanagan (Midnight Mass, Doctor Sleep) and Trevor Macy (The Midnight Club, The Haunting of Bly Manor) have a new adaptation of The Dark Tower novel series written by Stephen King (IT, The Shining) underway at Intrepid Pictures according to Deadline. The duo is leaving Netflix after six years and moving on to Amazon Studios which came shortly with news of the cancellation of their Netflix series The Midnight Club.
According to an interview with Deadline, the duo who are known for their works in television and films in the horror genre have acquired the rights to one of King’s multi-genre book series. Flanagan describes The Dark Tower as his dream project as he has already written a pilot and outlines for the seasons. Flanagan in the interview states, “I wrote a pilot, we view it as a series that’s going at least five seasons. And having lived with this project as long as I have, I have an enormous amount of it worked out in my brain. But I have a pilot script I’m thrilled with and a very detailed outline for the first season and a broader outline for the subsequent seasons.”
Although they are moving to Amazon Studio the rights to The Dark Tower series is not part of the deal. In the interview with Deadline Flanagan shares that, “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.”
King’s The Dark Tower spans an eight-novel series that incorporates many different genres such as horror, dark fantasy, science fiction, and even western. The novel series expands King’s book multiverse as it follows a gunslinger on a quest towards a tower and throughout the journey incorporates many of King’s other novels. In 2017, there was an adaptation of the series directed by Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair, Sandheden Om Mend) and starring Idris Elba (Turn Up Charlie, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw).
Many fans can’t wait to see what Flanagan and Macy can create not only with the The Dark Tower series but also with their journey into Amazon Studios. Although their time with Netflix is done, many can still catch Flanagan’s last mini-series on the streaming source The Fall of the House of Usher expected to premiere in 2023.