The Dark Tower, Stephen King's sprawling fantasy saga set in a world resembling the old west, is back on track after being taken on by the studio Warner Bros, reports Deadline.
Oscar-winning director Ron Howard's hugely ambitious attempt to bring the US writer's self-described "magnum opus" to the big screen faltered in July 2011 when Universal decided to pass on a proposal for three films and two linked TV series, which were to be shown on the NBC network. Warner Bros is now reportedly interested in making at least the first film, and would be in prime position to greenlight the TV element through its sister company, the critically acclaimed HBO channel.
Javier Bardem, tipped to play gunslinger Roland Deschain, is reportedly still on board, and Howard is likely to direct from a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, who won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind and also worked on The Da Vinci Code and its sequel, Angels and Demons, with Howard. The shoot may commence as early as the first quarter of 2013.
Howard and Goldsman, who is also producing, have reportedly trimmed the budget for the project following Universal's concerns. The Dark Tower arrives in Hollywood at a time when even high-profile film-makers are struggling to get ambitious projects approved. Last year, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson had to settle for making one Tintin movie at a time, rather than the trilogy they had originally anticipated. The Oscar-winning director Andrew Stanton is under intense scrutiny following the failure of John Carter to open strongly at the US box office, despite a reported $300m budget.
A nightmarish jigsaw puzzle of colliding references and motifs, The Dark Tower throws together a bloodthirsty panorama of Sergio Leone-style cowboys, post-apocalyptic mutants, demons and murderers. There are seven books in the original series, with an additional eighth, published last month, slotting in between volumes four and five. More than 30m books in the series have been sold in 40 countries. Howard's proposal for the project would be potentially even greater in scope than Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, itself a gargantuan eight-year endeavour.
