Stephen King Is Writing Material For Mike Flanagan's The Dark Tower Series

Update: In a message on Blue Sky, Stephen King posted "Contrary to the Internet (which usually is never wrong), I am NOT writing for Mike Flanagan's DARK TOWER." Whether this story is the result of King misspeaking or the outlets present at the event misunderstanding the quote remains to be determined. For now, we'll take King's word for it. Our original story follows below. 

Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series of books is generally considered by fans to be the author's magnum opus. Stretching over seven novels and a novella, it's a wild sprawl that has stymied many talented screenwriters who've attempted to adapt it to film and/or television. Obviously, with that much material, a streaming series would make the most sense, but because a good deal of the saga is cinematic in scope, writers and directors keep dreaming of a way to bring it to the big screen.

After the debacle of the 2017 film, which ineptly attempted to compress the narrative and thematic essence of the entire series into one 95-minute film, "The Dark Tower" seemed quite dead for years to come. But filmmaker Mike Flanagan, who's become a favorite of King fans via his adaptations of "Gerald's Game" and "Doctor Sleep," managed to get Amazon Prime Video interested in a full-fledged, live-action take on the books, and, amazingly, the company has yet to get cold feet.

Several months ago, it sounded like Flanagan's "The Dark Tower" series was still quite a ways off in terms of going before cameras, but none other than King himself recently suggested that it's still very much alive and moving forward. Where do things stand right now?

During an appearance at IGN Fan Fest 2025, King, who was in attendance to promote Osgood Perkins' ultra-bloody rendition of King's short story "The Monkey," revealed that he is currently knocking out new material for Flanagan's series. Per King:

"All I can say is it's happening. I am writing stuff now and I think that's all I want to say because the next thing you know, I'll stir up a bunch of stuff I don't necessarily want to stir up yet. I'm in process right now, and to say too much feels like a jinx."

He did this for the Paramount+ miniseries of "The Stand" in 2020 to hit-or-miss effect, so maybe don't get too excited just yet about his involvement here. That said, Flanagan seems to understand the scale of the challenge ahead of him, and, like King, doesn't want to get the author's legion of constant readers over-hyped. As the director told The Hollywood Reporter last September:

"That thing's launching an oil tanker. But we're working on it. It was stalled first by me moving from Netflix to Amazon and stalled again by the strikes. It's progressing, and we're further along than we've ever been on it. I do see feature components to some of the other stories, but the main storyline is [an] ongoing series."

"Feature components" sounds like movies, which would be incredible, but, with the memory of the 2017 film still lingering, I wonder how eager Prime Video would be to finance Flanagan's medium-straddling ambitious vision. We'll have to wait until that oil tanker is a little farther out of port before we get a sense of how big Flanagan's "The Dark Tower" will really be. In the meantime, perhaps we'll learn that James Wan is taking a crack at "The Stand."