Sam Strike and Jasper Pääkkönen had been cast as the Gunslinger and the Man in Black, respectively.

The Dark Tower type Movie

The Man in Black fled across the desert, but Amazon did not follow.

Plans for The Dark Tower TV series have halted as the streaming service decided not to move forward with the planned adaptation from The Walking Dead and Damien‘s Glen Mazzara, EW confirmed independently.

A rep for Amazon declined to comment on this story, though Mazzara himself tweeted about this latest news for the long-developing project.

“I’m incredibly proud of the work our cast and crew did on The Dark Tower pilot,” he wrote. “They are an immensely creative group of people who gave it their all and took big risks. I know they delivered big time. Tbh, I wouldn’t change a thing. We worked hard to honor this amazing story and bring it to life. I believe it’s the version fans have been waiting for. Ask [The Dark Tower author Stephen King] and [Robin Furth].” Furth is King’s research assistant who worked to develop the novels into the comic book medium.

“But like Roland, I gotta keep searching,” Mazzara continued. “The quest continues. There are other worlds than these.”

It took years for a Dark Tower TV series, which Sony tried to get off the ground prior to Amazon, to make it to this point. Actor Sam Strike, who appeared in HBO’s Chernobyl and Syfy’s Nightflyers, had been cast as Roland Deschain. BlacKkKlansman‘s Jasper Pääkkönen was to play the Man in Black.

Sony released a Dark Tower movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey in 2017, but this was meant to be separate. Per previous comments from Mazzara, the plan was to adapt the events of King’s novels and chronicle how Roland became the Gunslinger, how Walter became the Man in Black, and “how their rivalry cost Roland everything and everyone he ever loved.”

A pilot was ordered but Deadline, which was first to report the news, states Amazon executives did not feel it was on the same level as The Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time series.

“While of course I’m disappointed, I’m also grateful to Amazon for their support and for allowing us to get as far as we did,” Mazzara said in a statement. “It was an amazing creative experience for everyone involved. Fingers crossed we get another opportunity elsewhere.”

And so, the quest to bring The Dark Tower to TV continues.

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