Mike Flanagan Is Taking on ‘The Dark Tower’ Series, and He’s the Right Man for the Job

Director Mike Flanagan recently signed a deal with Amazon Prime Video to move his and producing partner, Trevor Macy’s company Intrepid Pictures to the streaming platform instead of Netflix. Flanagan saw success with limited series like The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass on Netflix. However, his most recent show, The Midnight Club, was canceled after only one season. Now, Flanagan revealed he acquired the rights to Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series and plans to turn it into a television series. Here’s why he’s the perfect guy for the job.

Mike Flanagan is a master at complex horror

When most people think of horror, they rarely think of tears streaming down their faces when a character dies. It’s horror, after all. Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen? However, Flanagan expertly weaves intricate and often gut-wrenching details into his characters’ backstories. In short, Flanagan creates characters the audience connects with on screen. He also manages to combine horrific imagery and a few perfectly timed jump scares so the viewers never forget they’re watching something scary.

King, a master of horror himself, often does something similar with his characters. However, his series The Dark Tower combines fantasy with horror, making it a bit different from his usual novels.

In 2017, Nikolaj Arcel brought The Dark Tower to the big screen with superstars like Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. It failed to capture the magic of King’s series, though. Now, it looks like this might be Flanagan’s time to shine.

Mike Flanagan adapting ‘The Dark Tower’ into a series instead of a movie is the right move

If you’ve ever read a novel by King, then you know he’s a man of many, many words. All of his books go into significant detail with the backstories and histories of his characters. A feature-length film would never be able to include all of the detail needed to capture everything that happens in the series. That’s why Flanagan’s choice to make The Dark Tower a five-season series as opposed to a movie should be applauded.

According to Deadline, Flanagan “envisions [The Dark Tower] as a TV series to run for five seasons, followed by two stand-alone features.

Some might see this as overload. However, knowing King’s work, even that amount of screen time might not be enough to cover every detail from the book series.

Stephen King himself gave Mike Flanagan the greenlight to adapt ‘The Dark Tower’

For those worried King might not be on board for yet another adaption of his work, we have good news. Flanagan actually approached King with a detailed outline of his plans.

“This happened because I sent him a very, very detailed outline of what I wanted to do with it,” Flanagan told Deadline. “And it was in response to that, that he gave us the rights. A project like this, I wouldn’t want to be involved in it at all If we were taking it in a direction that was going to be blasphemous to the Stephen King material, but he’s been very, very supportive and very excited about what we’d like to do with it.”