Universal has opted to bring King's seven-novel epic to celluloid. But should Ron Howard direct?
Recent years have contrived to restrict the number of projects which fall into the category 'cannot be done'. It's not so long ago that JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was 'unfilmable', and the idea of a trilogy of super-dark, adult-oriented Batman films would have been scuppered by the need to sell plenty of Batmerchandise and ensure spots for Seal and U2 on the soundtrack.
However, it seems that, despite the supposed industry backlash against fanboy projects, we are living in more open-minded times. Gone are the days when rogue producers with little in the way of creative nous seemed to be able to inflict their every whim on the battered cinemagoing public. In 2010, to an extent, the film-maker is king – at least if his name is Christopher Nolan.
Ron Howard may not be a director to get the hip kids hot under the collar but he has critical (well, Academy) acclaim nailed and is capable of keeping the money-men onside – even if that does mean shooting bland big-screen adaptations of Dan Brown novels in between his more imaginative projects. But is he the right man to film The Dark Tower, Stephen King's sprawling seven-novel fantasy series about gunslinger Roland Deschain and his multi-dimensional struggle to find the structure that holds the key to saving his world? Despite, that is, being one of the few people in Hollywood with the clout to actually get the thing made.
According to Deadline, King is planning a three-film version of the saga with at least another two seasons of a TV show to connect the dots. Such a multi-platform project would be the first of its kind and potentially even greater in scope than Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, itself a gargantuan eight-year endeavour.
'What Peter did was a feat, cinematic history,' Howard told Deadline. 'The approach we're taking also stands on its own, but it's driven by the material. I love both, and like what's going on in TV. With this story, if you dedicated to one medium or another, there's the horrible risk of cheating material. The scope and scale call for a big-screen budget. But if you committed only to films, you'd deny the audience the intimacy and nuance of some of these characters and a lot of cool twists and turns that make for jaw-dropping, compelling television.
'We've put some real time and deep thought into this, and a lot of conversations and analysis from a business standpoint, to get people to believe in this and take this leap with us. I hope audiences respond to it in a way that compels us to keep going after the first year or two of work. It's fresh territory for me as a film-maker.'
Howard's screenwriter for the whole shebang is Akiva Goldsman, who won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind but was also responsible for The Da Vinci Code and sequel Angels and Demons – two films the average cinemagoer would rather be burned as a heretic than sit through again. King is also on board as a producer, though it's not clear how much involvement he will have or want to have.
Both Howard and Goldsman seem to have been instrumental in getting the project greenlit by Universal, which is an excellent sign. My concern, however, is that both are what I would term 'safe pairs of hands' rather than visionary, risk-taking film-makers. King's Dark Tower series, which he describes as his 'magnum opus', is far from safe material. A nightmarish jigsaw puzzle of colliding references and motifs, it throws together a bloodthirsty panorama of Sergio Leone-esque cowboys, post-apocalyptic mutants, demons and murderers. Unlike Lord of the Rings, the violence is not filtered through comfortable olde-worlde stereotypes – no one is sipping ale at the Prancing Pony here – and there are regular reminders of how close the novels' fearsome universe is to the worst parts of our own.
It's a hellish vision, and one which bears little resemblance to anything else in either film-maker's canon. Moreover, even if the film versions are able to push the envelope a little, how will the TV series follow suit if they are screened as planned on conservative US TV network NBC?
With luck, we'll know sooner rather than later. Howard is planning to begin directing the first film as soon as he's finished The Dilemma, a comedy starring Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder. Given MGM's current travails, this means the first Dark Tower film might even arrive on our screens before Jackson's The Hobbit. 'Cannot be done' doesn't seem to be in Howard's vocabulary – but is he the right man for the job?
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