Stephen King's long-awaited Dark Tower TV spin-off may have found new life at Amazon Studios, according to fresh reports.

The live-action project had been developed simultaneously to last year's Hollywood film adaptation, and was to have carried over that movie's star Idris Elba for a prequel exploring the early years of the Gunslinger.

When the movie bombed with critics and flopped at the box office last summer, the future of the TV series from Walking Dead writer Glen Mazzara seemed in doubt. However, Deadline is reporting that Amazon Studios has now started work on a new approach.

Columbia Pictures

Amazon has been dipping quite often into popular literary franchises recently, having bought the rights to a Lord of the Rings series and an adaptation of the science fiction Culture novels.

Prior to the film's release last year, The Dark Tower director Nikolaj Arcel claimed that the TV spin-off would be "totally canon" with his movie.

"We're going back in the past. It's very, very closely adhering to [King's fourth novel] Wizard and Glass and parts of The Gunslinger novel," the filmmaker said last year.

"That was exciting to be even more like, 'Okay, now we're going to be able to even lift lines directly, or like [write] characters exactly as they are'. Which, as a fan, was exciting in a different way."

Columbia Pictures

But that all changed when his movie flopped. Just two months later, Stephen King himself said that any TV version of The Dark Tower would now be a "complete reboot".

It's unclear whether that's still the strategy now that Amazon Studios is apparently involved. Expect more on that as the development process moves ahead.

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