The Dark Tower Almost Cost Mike Flanagan Another Stephen King Adaptation

Mike Flanagan is not just one of our modern horror masters, but he's proved to be one of the very best there is at adapting Stephen King's work for the screen. Between "Gerald's Game" and "Doctor Sleep," he's done the unthinkable not once, but twice. Two of the least-adaptable King novels were brought to life in brilliant fashion. Now, Flanagan is back with another King movie in the form of "The Life of Chuck," which is earning rave reviews on the festival circuit. However, it turns out Flanagan almost lost that opportunity thanks to his currently gestating adaptation of "The Dark Tower."

King's "The Dark Tower" series is his magnum opus, consisting of multiple novels spread out over decades. Flanagan is now working on adapting those books into a show. That's great news for fans of King's work. However, as the filmmaker recently noted in an interview with Vanity Fair, that created a bit of a conflict when he decided he wanted to take on "The Life of Chuck." Flanagan explained that the material in the 2020 novella resonated with him so much that he instantly knew he wanted to turn it into a movie:

"By the end of it, I was in tears, and incredibly uplifted, and convinced I'd read maybe the best thing that he'd written in a decade. I just was floored by the thing. So I fired off an email to him right away saying how much I loved the story, how incredible I thought it was, how meaningful, and important, and how it had really tattooed itself on my heart and said, 'It's the movie I want to make so that it'll exist in the world for my kids.'"

Unfortunately, King has a policy of not letting filmmakers squat on rights to his properties. Because Flanagan already had "Dark Tower" in the works, King was hesitant to let him have "Life of Chuck" as well. "He doesn't like to give the same filmmaker more than one thing, because it typically means one thing is not advancing at all," Flanagan explained. "He said, 'Well, let's focus on The Tower and I'll try to keep this one available for you for later.'"

As such, Flanagan focused on other projects, including "The Fall of the House of Usher" for Netflix. Things changed though when "The Dark Tower" began to enter what we might call development hell. Then, Flanagan and his producing partner Trevor Macy left Netflix for a new deal at Amazon in late 2022. That slightly halted development on the series, which was not ideal. Plus, the WGA and SAG strikes in 2023 further halted development on just about everything in Hollywood.

Ironically, though, that actually ended up opening the door for "Life of Chuck" once more. Because "Dark Tower" was sort of on the backburner, King gave Flanagan his blessing to proceed. Flanagan wasted zero time. As the filmmaker explained:

"I was off like a shot. I think I turned in the draft to him before he got around to sending the formal agreement."

"The Life of Chuck" was published in 2020 as part of King's "If it Bleeds" collection. The story is told in three separate parts that make up the biography of Charles Krantz in reverse, beginning with his death from a brain tumor and ending with his childhood in an allegedly haunted house. Tom HIddleston ("Loki") leads the cast of the movie, with Karen Gillan ("Guardians of the Galaxy"), Jacob Tremblay ("Room"), and Matthew Lillard ("Scream") also starring. "Star Wars" legend Mark Hamill is also in the film, and Flanagan has high praise for the actor's work.

Flanagan ended up shooting the film outside the studio system during the strikes with a waiver from the guilds to do so. In approaching the adaptation that way, he was also able to bring a far less compromised version of the story to life:

"It's so rare that I get to approach any project that just has not an ounce of cynicism to it. I just really believed in this thing. But it was also clear that we would have an incredibly uphill battle bringing the story to any major studio. They would try to make it as familiar as possible, instead of leaning into what makes it so different."

"The Life of Chuck" doesn't currently have a release date, but stay tuned.