Ron Howard to Take on Stephen King’s The Dark Tower

It’s been a long time coming, but it seems as though Stephen King’s The Dark Tower might finally be coming to both big screens and small. According to both Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog, Imagine Entertainment and Weed Road are in discussions with Stephen King to bring The Dark Tower to movie screens. The plan is to start out with a film to be directed by Ron Howard from a script Akiva Goldsman and Howard’s partner at Imagine Brian Grazer producing, followed by a television series produced by Imagine’s TV division.

The deal is quickly coming together at Universal after J.J. Abrams company, Bad Robot, handed the rights to the project back to King. Lost executive producers Abrams, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were eyeing the book series for a television, but sadly realized they wouldn’t be able to do the well loved book series justice.

The Dark Tower series is considered by many to be Stephen King’s magnum opus, takes place in a world that has a wild west feel but is infused with magic and follows Roland Deschain the last gunslinger of his kind on a quest to save his world. The series spans seven books and one short story with characters from some of King’s other books visiting the Tower universe in major and minor ways. King is working on an eighth Dark Tower novel, whose story line actually falls midway through the series and will not affect the series ending.