Warner Bros to back Dark Tower movie

After several months lost in the wilderness we finally have another studio showing interest in adapting Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic Western; The Dark Tower. Mike Flemming is reporting that Warner Bros are in talks – in fact very close to closing a deal – with director Ron Howard and partners, to fund their adaptation of this epic fantasy.

If you remember, Universal Pictures originally took up the option to back Howard on this hugely ambitious project with Akiva Goldsman writing the script for a full movie trilogy, plus a couple of TV series. But, last spring Universal put the whole thing on hold asking Goldsman to drastically cut the budget until two months later, in July 2011, Universal walked away after deciding they still couldn’t handle the cost of making such a project.

That Warner has taken an interest in this shouldn’t be such a surprise when we recall that just a few months back Brian Grazer was interviewed by MTV News stating that the TV segment of the project would be taken up by critically acclaimed studio HBO (Game of Thrones, Band of Brothers). As HBO is a Warner Bros sister studio, this indeed bodes well for Dark Tower fans.

Warner Bros themselves are no strangers to mega multi-part movies having backed projects such as Harry Potter and the Matrix, so they’re certainly going to have the willingness and resources to back something as grand as The Dark Tower.

For now, everything that was in place previously is set to remain; Howard, Grazer and Goldsman, with Mark Verheiden (Battlestar Galactica) being brought in to co-write the TV series, and Javier Bardem in the lead role of Roland Deschain.

A possible production start date is Q1 2013.

It’s great to see a studio of Warner’s stature take an interest in the Dark Tower. With their recent big-budget movies and HBO’s quality track record I’m really getting excited by this news.

This saga has been on-going for several years now; J.J.Abrams was first on the scene way back in 2007 when he famously bought the movie rights for $19, and yet each time we’ve been left disappointed. Still, summer is just around the corner and I’m getting lots of positive vibes, so I’m going to put my neck out and say I think this could be it; the Dark Tower will be a Warner Bros movie.