Update (06/02/15): Since publishing this piece, reports leaked that Sony Pictures is eying Nikolaj Arcel, director of the Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair and writer of the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo film, to take the Dark Tower reins. The plan is for Arcel to rewrite and direct a film based on the first Dark Tower novel, The Gunslinger, kicking off both a series of films and a companion television series. Will it actually happen? Here's our original essay, on why adapting Stephen King's western fantasy will be a mighty big task for Arcel and his collaborators:

Stephen King's novels have occasionally made a successful transition to the big screen, but none has experienced as bumpy an adaptation ride as The Dark Tower series. King's sprawling fantasy-horror-action-Western opus spans seven books written between 1982 and 2004. But that's not all—there's also an eighth book (The Wind Through the Keyhole) that was written in 2012 after the official series was finished, as well as numerous Marvel comics installments that either give graphic-novel treatment to tales told in the books, or present prequel/spin-off stories to accompany the proper narrative. To say it's a huge franchise would be an understatement. And as of this month it's finally set to make it to the multiplex.

Stop me if you've heard this before. The recent announcement that The Dark Tower is going to be made by Sony and Media Rights Capital in a multimedia venture involving an intertwined film trilogy and TV series is a rehash of 2012's news that Warner Bros. was aiming to do likewise. At that time, Warner had partnered with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment, with Howard looking to direct at least the first cinematic installment and HBO carrying the series. That 2012 deal came about because Universal had previously pulled the plug on an identical Howard partnership in 2011. And those plans were preceded by King selling the rights to the books in 2007 to J.J. Abrams for a mere $19. Abrams' work on Lost had convinced the author that he was the right man for the job. So the fact that Sony aims to resurrect Grazer and Howard's adaptation—at least in template, albeit with a newly revised script from Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) and original screenwriter Jeff Pinkner—can't help but be met with a healthy dose of "I'll believe it when I see it" skepticism.

To understand why it's been so hard to get a filmed variation off the ground, it's necessary to look at what The Dark Tower is, and what a live-action version would require. At least initially inspired by Robert Browning's 1855 poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," King's story begins quite simply with 1982's The Gunslinger, which recounts the efforts of a solitary man named Roland Deschain to cross a desert in pursuit of a mysterious Man in Black. Roland lives in Mid-World, which is situated in a universe that runs on something of a parallel track to our own (sharing some things, and featuring slightly warped versions of others), except in Mid-World, traces of ancient magic still exist, albeit in fleeting amounts. Perhaps because of that dissipation, or because of other forces entirely, Mid-World and its once formidable advanced-technology foundations are crumbling. Roland's desire to catch up to the Man in Black is related to his larger quest to reach the mythic Dark Tower, which is rumored to be the nexus of all universes, and where Roland hopes he can save his world from ruin.

Roland is the last "gunslinger," part of a legendary group of knight-like warriors, and just as he resembles (in look, as well as stoic-badass attitude) Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name, so too does The Gunslinger resemble something of a fantastical variation on a spaghetti Western, complete with a centerpiece one-against-many massacre. It also features Roland's first encounter with young Jake Chambers, a boy from our own world who strangely winds up in Mid-World, and whose fate at the end of The Gunslinger winds up coloring the rest of the saga. And what a saga it is. Crisscrossing between Mid-World and earth, during which time Roland acquires a motley posse known as a ka-tet (ka being the Mid-World term for "fate") that aids him on his journey, The Dark Tower proves to be an epic of immense scope, tremendous action, and ultimately heartrending tragedy.

Boasting its own specialized language and an immense roster of characters led by Roland's sidekicks Jake, Susannah Dean (a wheelchair-bound African-American woman from the 1960s with a split personality), Eddie Dean (a junkie from the 1980s with a knack for sharpshooting), and their pet Oy, the novels deliver a barrage of show-stopping set pieces involving (to name only a few) a sentient train, a cyborg bear, and none other than Stephen King himself. To put it bluntly: The Dark Tower is gargantuan. And gargantuan in a way that isn't easily condensable. While each novel might, on its own terms, lend itself to minor abbreviations—an encounter cut here, a diversion shortened there—there's no way to fundamentally get rid of, or even effectively skim over, any of the seven official novels. A possible exception to that rule might be Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass, which functions as one long flashback to Roland's youthful familial and romantic dramas. Yet even ditching Wizard and Glass would entail casting off so much of Roland's backstory that his motivations, and the basic nature of his character, would seriously suffer in the process.

If, from a narrative point of view, The Dark Tower is hard to reduce in size, then a further obstacle to any filmic/television adaptation is the likely cost of the project. Roland and company's odyssey takes him on foot through one extraordinary rural and urban setting after another, including Manhattan, along the way facing creatures and foes of a far-from-normal sort. Consequently, pulling it off would necessitate both substantial on-location shooting and considerable special-effects artistry. It's an endeavor on par with Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, except it would run as long as both of those series combined, and would lead to potentially more logistical hurdles, be it clearance issues for its bounty of allusions to modern American pop culture and King's other novels (many of which share some relationship to Mid-World and its villain, The Crimson King), or its sizable diversity of settings.

Is it doable? With Jackson's films reconfirming moviegoers' hunger for intricately conceived swords-and-sorcery franchises, with Game of Thrones proving that television can handle long-format fantasy epics based on prior source material, and with A-listers like Javier Bardem and Russell Crowe having shown interest in playing Roland, it certainly seems that now is the ideal time for the live-action rebirth of The Dark Tower. Though whether, like Roland, it reaches its final destination is a question only time (and ka) can ultimately answer.

Nick Schager Nick Schager is a NYC-area film critic and culture writer with twenty years of professional experience writing about all the movies you love, and countless others that you don’t.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io