Stephen King's DARK TOWER TV & movie franchise 0

[Bosco685]

TV series news hit today.

Former The Walking Dead Show-Runner To Helm Dark Tower TV Series

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The Dark Tower TV show, which is expected to be a straight-to-series deal, has now picked up a show-runner. The news appears to be a significant indicator that things are moving along. The Walking Dead's Glenn Mazzara has been tapped to helm the new series which THR reports will run for 10 to 13 episodes, either on cable or a streaming outlet by producers Media Rights Capital and Sony Pictures Television.

 

"I’ve been a Stephen King fan for decades and the opportunity to adapt The Dark Tower as a TV series is a great honor," Mazzara told THR. "The events of The Gunslinger, Wizard & Glass, The Wind Through the Keyhole, and other tales need a long format to capture the complexity of Roland's coming of age — how he became the Gunslinger, how Walter became the Man in Black, and how their rivalry cost Roland everything and everyone he ever loved. I could not be more excited to tell this story. It feels like being given the key to a treasure chest. And oh yeah, we’ll have billy-bumblers!"

 

[mattn792]

From the sound of things so far, the TV series should be DOA.  

The first trailer made it seem like this movie might have it's moments and meet my low expectations if I could just bring myself to detach from the source material, but my opinion has gone even further downhill since.  I'll see the movie once it gets to Netflix, we already pay for that so why drop an extra $2 at Red Box just for Matthew McConaughy to sell me a Lincoln.  The critics' review on Rotten Tomatoes are pretty funny at least.

[1Cool]

Watched the movie last night and I kept wanting to check my cell phone.  Just felt so flat and basically boring pretty much front to back.  Waste of a good premise.  Don't waste the money - grab it on Netflix or Redbox.

[chrisco37]

The local radio review guy on the news station (who always seems to give 3 stars or better) gave this a 1.5 star.   

[1Cool]

3 hours ago, chrisco37 said:

The local radio review guy on the news station (who always seems to give 3 stars or better) gave this a 1.5 star.   

I'd give it a 2 out of 5.  new Spiderman was a 3.5 and Wonder Woman was a 4.5 for comparison.

[Bosco685]

What an odd box office year when so little can end up as the #1 for the weekend.

‘The Dark Tower’ Is Tall Enough For No. 1 During Sluggish Summer Weekend

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For the second weekend in a row, Sony figured out a way to work around the Rotten Tomatoes system so that they could get a lackluster title to open. Last weekend it was the Emoji Movie which posted an OK $24.5M in second while this weekend it’s their Media Rights Capital co-production The Dark Tower which is taking No. 1 with a modest estimated $19.5M.

 

By no means can either film be considered raging victories, because if they were both warmly embraced by critics and audiences, the sky would have been the limit at the box office. Dark Tower is based on fan favorite Stephen King novel, and the translation from book to screen was never going to be right due to the book’s complexities and genre-twisting (some directors, writers and studios like Bad Robot, Universal and Warner Bros. realized that).

 

We analyzed earlier in the weekend whether Dark Tower would have just been better suited for television from the onset. Sony TV and MRC are already making-good to fans with a planned TV version led by former Walking Dead show-runner Glen Mazzara. In regards to the film version, low overall positive scores here on ComScore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak with those over 25 and the leading male demo giving Dark Tower 67%.

 

The one positive takeaway here is that while other studios couldn’t figure out financially how to construct Dark Tower, Sony did. They knew it was ambitious, saw how risky it was in its genre-mash up (which by the way never works at the B.O., read Cowboys vs. Aliens, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) and partnered with MRC 50/50 on this mid-range net $60M budget.

 

[reddwarf666222]

On 8/4/2017 at 8:18 AM, 1Cool said:

I'd give it a 2 out of 5.  new Spiderman was a 3.5 and Wonder Woman was a 4.5 for comparison.

I gave the film a solid 2.5 out of 5. There are solid moments in the film that are good, but just not enough to make you go wow I want to see that film again. While in the same token there are bad moments in the film again not enough to say you wasted your money or time watching this film. I just left the film  with a feeling didnt hate or loved it. It's essentially a film that jumps too fast around all over the place missing alot of story, I am curious how many minutes were cut out to get a PG 13 rating, and some sequences that were filmed so bad dark upon dark upon dark to where you can't see what is going like they were trying to hide something.  Elba and McCounaghey were both boring. Jake is good in the film and the last few minutes looked fantastic, but that does not make up for mediocre to bad for the rest of the film.

[Gatsby77]

*patiently waiting for the geeks to defend this one, a la suicide squad*

 

[mattn792]

Here's one thing I can't wrap my head around -- the Horn of Eld's presence is being talked up as a symbol that this is Roland's next chapter.  Fair enough, but then why is Jake even in the movie?  (Book spoilers follow, so proceed accordingly)

Spoiler

 

For starters, Jake, Eddie, and Susannah are all re-united to live happily ever after in book seven once Susannah decides to see what's behind Door #1 and checks out of End World.  Now let us postulate:

- If time's progression stayed consistent and the Tower just sent Roland back to the same spot in the desert, then it's pretty safe to assume that all that previously transpired has remained transpired.  Ergo, the guy with the crow has probably died by now, Tull is a ghost town, and his previous ka-tet are happily living their new lives elsewhere.

- If that particular spot in the desert serves as some divergence into multiple possible realities, and Roland is onto reality number whatever of how many, and yet he still runs across alternate reality Jake with the exact same problems, then the universe is just as unimaginative as the people at Sony seem to have been with this movie.

- If the Tower threw 7.5 books' worth of events into straight rewind (like that scene in Spaceballs, only backwards) then one would be left to imagine that events would play out roughly the same, which would certainly suck for a whole lot of the involved parties.  Roland wouldn't physically end up in our world until much, much later, and he certainly wouldn't need any prodding to pursue the Tower (remember, Jake is putting on his best "you go get that Tower" sales pitch in the first trailer that dropped).

 

Lord help me, I haven't built up this much disdain for a movie since X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

[ComicConnoisseur]

I had high hopes for this as a Stephen King fan. 

Wow another movie bombs at the summer box office and on rotten tomatoes!

 The Dark Tower, after languishing in development hell for years, has arrived and promptly bombed at the box office.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/08/06/there-was-no-world-in-which-the-dark-tower-wasnt-going-to-bomb/#5db4b3656acc

and rotten tomatoes wasn't kind at 18%! 

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dark_tower_2017/

 

[F For Fake]

Huge King fan, love the Tower series, still couldn't convince myself to go see the movie this weekend. Slept late, instead. Think I made the right call.

[ComicConnoisseur]

5 hours ago, F For Fake said:

Huge King fan, love the Tower series, still couldn't convince myself to go see the movie this weekend. Slept late, instead. Think I made the right call.

Another pop culture icon from the 1980's and 1990's that either Hollywood didn't get or we the audience have outgrown for some reason that made us not care. 

Other similar recent failures that meet that criteria are Ghostbusters,TMNT,Transformers,Independence Day,Power Rangers, The Mummy,Baywatch, and Ghost in the Shell.

All have fizzled. 

Other than Jurassic World it seems most reboots from the 1980s/1990s fail.

Maybe it's time for Hollywood to find out why these once iconic franchises are not hitting it off with modern audiences?

 

[fastballspecial]

No desire. I didn't like the books so I will rent it.

 

[reddwarf666222]

19 minutes ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

Another pop culture icon from the 1980's and 1990's that either Hollywood didn't get or we the audience have outgrown for some reason that made us not care. 

Other similar recent failures that meet that criteria are Ghostbusters,TMNT,Transformers,Independence Day,Power Rangers, The Mummy,Baywatch, and Ghost in the Shell.

All have fizzled. 

Other than Jurassic World it seems most reboots from the 1980s/1990s fail.

Maybe it's time for Hollywood to find out why these once iconic franchises are not hitting it off with modern audiences?

 

I am not sure who was for a Power Rangers, Independence Day, and Baywatch reboots/sequels. We were asking for Ghostbusters, but the fan base made sure that film failed before reaching the screen like I have never seen before. We were asking for TMNT just not Bay the first film did ok the sequel did worse despite that it was more enjoyable to watch. Ghost in the Shell has been asked for awhile it was just to Japanese for the average audience. Transformers 5 well the rest of the world asked for that film we didn't, and The Mummy there was a call by a small audience for Universal Horror series just not enough to support big films.

 

[mattn792]

11 hours ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

Another pop culture icon from the 1980's and 1990's that either Hollywood didn't get or we the audience have outgrown for some reason that made us not care. 

Other similar recent failures that meet that criteria are Ghostbusters,TMNT,Transformers,Independence Day,Power Rangers, The Mummy,Baywatch, and Ghost in the Shell.

All have fizzled. 

Other than Jurassic World it seems most reboots from the 1980s/1990s fail.

Maybe it's time for Hollywood to find out why these once iconic franchises are not hitting it off with modern audiences?

 

There's no mystery to it, the movies are just bad. 

[ComicConnoisseur]

9 minutes ago, mattn792 said:

There's no mystery to it, the movies are just bad. 

But why are they bad? They are spending millions on these? We would think they would do better research to find out what their audience wants? They are wasting millions of dollars that they won't be able to waste in a few years as the movie box office dwindles and changes over to streaming. I really wanted all of these movies to succeed and it is sad when only maybe one Jurassic World was a hit. 

[mattn792]

1 hour ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

But why are they bad? They are spending millions on these? We would think they would do better research to find out what their audience wants? They are wasting millions of dollars that they won't be able to waste in a few years as the movie box office dwindles and changes over to streaming. I really wanted all of these movies to succeed and it is sad when only maybe one Jurassic World was a hit. 

The same reasons that movies have been bombing for decades -- bad scripting, bad casting, bad acting, bad this, bad that.  And not learning from past bad.  Think about Kevin Costner's greatest hits -- Waterworld was a disaster, and yet someone still invested fat stacks in making The Postman.  Which managed to be even worse. 

To circle back to the Dark Tower -- just from the general details and the trailers you can see many points where this movie fails.  95 minutes.  PG-13.  Terribly miscast leads.  Bland -script.  Generic run of the mill action movie explosions.  And more explosions.  With fire.  Poorly set.  Roland portrayed as seemingly invulnerable superhero.  Etc.

All involved failed in their attempt to create broad based appeal for this movie, and killed the entire essence of the novels in the process.

[Bosco685]

The Dark Tower TV series' fate might be based on a survey

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If no one is interested in the movie, why would they be interested in the show? Seems a reasonable question. Luckily the studio has a solution: surveys!

 

Yes, according to Deadline: "There was an unusual question in the exit survey for The Dark Tower this weekend, with moviegoers asked whether they were interested in a Dark Tower TV series. It was included in the survey by MRC, which is set to co-produce the series with Sony TV. The result was that 83% of The Dark Tower film audience indicated that they were definitely/probably interested in a TV series."

 

So it seems like there might be interest! Here's what MRC co-CEO Modi Wiczyk said about the results:

 

That is incredibly encouraging; what it shows is that there is a very big, excited audience for the show...People who have seen the movie are interested in a TV series whether or not they liked the movie; even if they didn’t like the movie, they were not turn off by that...the success of the film has no correlation to whether the show will be successful or not, it has to stand on its own.

 

So while it's still no guarantee, it seems a DARK TOWER TV series might still be on the way.

 

[mattn792]

TV is still being talked about?  Ugh.  Please spare us.  We're nearly a month in and Rotten Tomatoes has the box office rake at $44 mil.  Seems like the only thing saving this movie from being a total monetary disaster is the fact that Sony skimped on the overall budget. 

[Fan Boy1]

Saw Dark Tower last month with friends.  It was Ok but not good. I find it somewhat rushed crammed so much into a single movie. I felt many scenes were cut, skipped over to next one. 

Granted, I didn't read the books nor really my thing. I just went to watch it with friends. Gave it 2 stars ... too generous,  I think.