Whenever talk of an adaptation of Stephen King's sprawling The Dark Tower series gets underway, the constant fan refrain is that it should be an HBO miniseries. Well, fans, producer Brian Grazer agrees with you. Fortunately for all of us, HBO agrees, too.

Kind of.

There is a caveat to the news that The Dark Tower will be developed as a TV series for HBO: The entire series isn't being adapted as a show, just one portion of it. If you'll recall, the ambitious project had originally planned to span several movies produced at Universal, with parts of the story bridging the films being done as a TV show that would air on the Universal-owned NBC. As you can imagine, however, doing multiple movies and a TV show is a huge, huge financial commitment. After Comcast bought NBC Universal, that kind of commitment just wasn't in the cards.

This roadblock didn't stop the movie, though, it just changed direction. As Grazer tells MTV, they may have lost part of their budget (he stakes the cut at $45 million), but they still want to do the TV series as a bridge for the films and that they've set up that side of things at HBO. How long the series will be and how many movies it will connect is unclear, as is what studio will actually step up to the plate and make this thing, but having an outstanding partner like HBO at your side is a very good reason to be optimistic.

And who knows, Grazer and director Ron Howard do have a successful history with HBO (they worked together on From the Earth to the Moon), so maybe if no studio buys into their ambitious plan, The Dark Tower will eventually became an HBO series entirely.