AMC comes through for the second week in a row after their revealing Mathieu Kassovitz interview last week this week they have a new interview with Damon Lindeloff which is meant to talk more about “Lost” and Star Trek than the bit of news I am interested in but that’s just the way it goes.
The final question in the interview concerns the adaptation of Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series, a series Lindeloff optioned with J.J. Abrams almost two years ago for the miniscule price of $19 keeping in tow with the recurring number in the series. King told SCI-FI Wire, “My attitude is, ‘Go make a movie, and if it’s good, that’s terrific, and if it’s bad, then it will go to the video stores and back shelves of Blockbuster, and I still get royalties on the book.”
For a long time it was thought they may try and take the series to television, but it seems Lindeloff is still considering a movie adaptation… actually he is considering seven of them to correspond with the seven books in the series centered on the gunslinger Roland Deschain of Gilead and his search for The Dark Tower. Here is what Lindeloff had to say about the potential film series:
The Dark Tower is to me every bit as daunting an adaptation as the Lord of the Rings trilogy must have been for Peter Jackson, except we’ve got seven books we’re looking at. And the idea of doing that at the same time Carlton and I are bringing Lost to a close is simply not viable. There are always Dark Tower conversations, but the figuring out of what this will look like as a movie has not begun. If The Dark Tower were in the right hands, I would love to see seven movies executed just right. But you have to get people to see the first one to get them to come and see the second one.
Speaking as someone who is 250 pages into the seventh and final book I really don’t see this happening, especially as a seven film series considering the final three books beginning with “Wolves of the Calla” are not that good and only seem to get worse. Thus the reason this seventh book is taking me so damned long. The first four books in the series are monumental and I have a hard time deciding which is my favorite between “Wastelands” (yup, I loved Blaine the Mono) and “Wizard and Glass” and I don’t think I will ever be able to decide between the two. However, while “Wolves of the Calla” is a decent read the ending is seriously lacking and the introduction of Stephen King into the narrative and actually into the story as an actual character in “Song of Susannah” was a terrible decision. It is distracting not only for the egotistical reasoning, but more for the fact that it just doesn’t work.
“The Dark Tower” is a series that bounces in and out of worlds and back and forth in time and it really seems to work through the majority of the fifth book and even “Song of Susannah” isn’t that bad as it serves as a means only to get to the seventh book. There is still plenty to enjoy in the final three books, but that Stephen King character thread is one that really has me bummed and I don’t think I am alone in my opinion on the final three books, which makes me think a seven film series really wouldn’t pay off unless they want the last three films to be the worst of the bunch.
Obviously since I still have about 900 pages to go in the final book I may be singing a completely different tune by the end, but as it stands right now this is where I sit.
Have any of you read all seven and do you agree or am I in the unknowing minority?
