The Man in Black fled across the desert and he had the contract for Universal’s adaptation of Stephen King’s opus The Dark Tower with him. Sadly, this time The Gunslinger did NOT follow.

For months Universal has been developing the seven-book series into a massive and ambitious project to be helmed by Ron Howard and included three feature films and a television series. The news was music to the Ka-tet’s ears and seemed too good to be true. When rumblings of budget concerns surfaced recently I began to fear the worst and now when faced with the July 15th deadline to commit Universal has pulled the plug due to the massive budget.

The good news is that the project is now free to be shopped around and we can one of the other big studios will pick it up. Now that Harry Potter has ridden his Firebolt into the sunset it could be argued that Warner Brothers should grab it as their next big franchise, but The Dark Tower doesn’t have the universal appeal that Harry Potter did unfortunately. Personally I’d like to see HBO or Showtime snatch it up and turn it into a series, but I don’t make the rules. There are so many different ways this story could make it to the screen, I just hope someone takes a chance on it.