The visionary director behind The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile has revealed that he was the one who passed on adapting The Dark Tower, debunking the long-standing myth that Stephen King had rejected him.
Frank Darabont, the filmmaker responsible for three of the most revered Stephen King adaptations—The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist—has finally explained why he never took the reins of The Dark Tower. In a recent conversation with IndieWire, the director cleared up years of speculation, emphasizing that he wasn’t turned away by King; rather, he personally declined the author’s offer.
According to Darabont, King personally invited him to spearhead the epic saga’s transition to the screen, but the director realized he wasn’t prepared for such an exhausting creative marathon at the time.
“I can actually set the record straight on that. It was I who turned Steve down. He called me—more than once, in fact—asking if I wanted to tackle ‘The Dark Tower.’ I was incredibly honored and deeply flattered. But, honestly, so much of that narrative exists within the characters’ psyches. It’s a sprawling, monumental epic. I thought, ‘Good grief, this could consume the next decade of my life,’ and I worried I might not even get it right because it’s such a devilishly difficult task to adapt. To be blunt, I was just burnt out at the time.”
Darabont noted that by the time he had recharged and felt ready to reconsider the project a few years later, the opportunity had already slipped away, as King had moved on to other creative partners.
“A couple of years later, when we were chatting again, I asked, ‘So, what’s happening with “The Dark Tower”? I might be having second thoughts.’ And he replied, ‘No, someone else is on it now.’ So, perhaps that’s where the ‘he turned me down’ narrative originated.”
Ultimately, The Dark Tower finally reached theaters in 2017 as a feature film directed by Nikolaj Arcel, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. The production was a critical and commercial failure, securing only a 16% “fresh” rating from critics and 44% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.
Now, the saga is set for a major revival under the guidance of director Mike Flanagan. Flanagan is currently developing his “ultimate dream project”: a massive adaptation consisting of a five-season television series followed by two feature films.
While these ambitious plans remain in place, Flanagan has admitted that they could still shift. The sheer scale of the undertaking is daunting, and rights issues complicate the inclusion of certain characters; Amazon, where Flanagan is developing the series, does not have access to all figures from the lore, as some rights remain with Warner Bros.
As of now, Flanagan’s Dark Tower adaptation does not have an official release window.
Source: iXBT.games