The three-season plan for the cancelled Dark Tower TV show at Amazon has been revealed.
When news hit that Amazon was looking to adapt Stephen King’s popular fantasy The Dark Tower novels into a TV show, it seemed things were looking up for the franchise after the disappointing movie starring Idris Elba.
But, unfortunately, it wasn’t to be as Amazon cancelled the series after shooting the pilot. The series’ showrunner Glen Mazzara was planning to tell Roland’s story from childhood right up to his adventures as an adult, taking the books out of their published order.
Speaking on The Kingcast podcast (via ScreeRant), Mazzara got the chance to share his three-season plan and it sounds pretty compelling: “Season 1 ended with the death of Susan. In Wizard and Glass very quickly you go from the death of Susan to the death of Gabrielle, (Deschain’s) mother. I felt that I needed a season to give me real estate so that Gabrielle’s death didn’t step on Susan’s and that it felt like an escalation.
“For season 2, the war with Farson was building. I was maybe going to use the shapeshifter story as part of season 2 and get to the death of Gabrielle and either the fall of Gilead there or the fall of Gilead would be the season 3 premiere.
“Very quickly there would be a last stand at Jericho Hill and by episode three or four of season 3 I was going to have Roland stumble out into the desert, follow him into the desert and then I was going to do a timelapse so that maybe you actually age Roland and switch actors. Then you have a new Roland reset the show at the top of season three, then go into The Gunslinger (Book one) and by the end of that season go into The Drawing of The Three (Book 2).”
This does sound like a pretty good way to get us to the exciting opening of book one while going into the fascinating history of Roland and this dark fantasy world. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps one day fans will get The Dark Tower adaptation they deserve.