THE DARK TOWER Cancelled by Universal

Today is a sad day for Stephen King fans as the epic adaptation of his series of seven novels, "The Dark Tower", has been cancelled. The main reason, cited to be the cause of the termination, is the huge budget required to make the three big screen movies and two TV series that covered King's popular series in its entirety. The project was announced at the end of last year and by March, it had already signed on a director, Ron Howard, and a major star, Javier Bardem. However, a few months ago, the first signs of trouble started to make themselves noticed as Universal, the studio producing the whole show, was beginning to voice worries regarding budget issues. Ron Howard came out and assured everyone that he very much intends to make it happen, but it was still up to the studio to come up with an answer. And that answer had a deadline: July 15.

Now, the fate of the project seems sealed. Since Universal has backed out of the deal, it doesn't seem very likely that other studios will be eager to pick up the project. To be honest, the whole thing was so ambitious, it was nothing short of madness. But it was beautiful madness and if they would have been able to pull it off, I'm pretty sure it would have been one for the history books. They could still do this as a TV mini-series, like the 1994 adaptation of "The Stand" which is pretty darn good (read a review here), or something in the lines of an HBO series, since they're known to be risk-takers and they do let filmmakers run free with their ideas. It remains to be seen what the future holds for "The Dark Tower". 

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