The adaption of Stephen King’s Magnum Opus The Dark Tower might be in a little trouble according to Variety:
Sources tell Variety that in the past few days, the project, based on Stephen King’s sweeping seven-book-and-counting series, has run into budgetary complications that have caused Universal execs to rethink original plans. Insiders expect U brass to meet in coming days to decide whether to put the project into turnaround, whereby producer Imagine Entertainment could shop it to another studio, either to partner with Universal or take over entirely.
[...] With a project of this size and scope, it wouldn’t be unusual for any studio to weigh its risk-sharing options — or pulling out — at this stage of development. And “Dark Tower” isn’t the only major project that Universal has recently reconsidered. “At the Mountains of Madness,” which had Guillermo del Toro set to direct and Tom Cruise circling to star, was scrapped on the brink of lensing after U calculated that it would struggle to make money with its $150 million budget and R rating.
The mention of the recently cancelled H.P. Lovecraft adaption reminds me how easy awesome projects like Mountains of Madness can get tossed aside no matter how creatively intersting they might become. Seeing that the project Dark Tower as laid out by Ron Howard is wildly ambitious it is not very surprising that problems like this might occure – I just hope they prevail and that events like this will be told similar to the success stories of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Avatar (very troubled production, so ambitious, almost cancelled but prevailed in the end).
Well there will be water if god wills it…
