Stephen King's The Dark Tower TV Series Gets Positive Update After 3 Years

When the news that Mike Flanagan will adapt Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" emerged in 2022, few people were more enthusiastic than King himself. The gigantic project has kept a low profile while Flanagan has worked on other things — both "The Fall of the House of Usher" miniseries and King adaptation "The Life of Chuck" have dropped since the announcement — but the author has kept the torch alight. In 2025 alone, King described Flanagan's plan for "The Dark Tower" adaptation as "perfect," and confirmed that he will write material for it (although he later backtracked that statement, which is a bit confusing). 

Now, Flanagan himself has provided a welcome update on the project. In an interview with ComicBook, he confirmed that while his "The Dark Tower" is still some way away, he's always working on it ... and that King is just as enthusiastic behind the scenes:

"It's not that I've put it down. It's just that the thing is so big, it's like building an oil tanker. We've been moving it forward this whole time. It's just, that's how big it is. It's constantly in the works, and you better believe as often as you guys may want to ask about it, Stephen King is asking me about it more, and I'm not gonna let him down."

Flanagan is not kidding when he's teasing the scope of the project. "The Dark Tower" series consists of eight King-sized main books, a novella, and a children's book called "Charlie the Choo-Choo," and its story has several connections to King's other literary output. Flanagan envisioned his "The Dark Tower" adaptation as a five-season Prime Video show when he took the job in 2022 ... but with both Amazon and King in his corner, who knows what the project's ultimate scale will be? 

Mike Flanagan is a truly fitting person to helm "The Dark Tower." A horror writer-director whose prolific output nearly rivals King himself, Flanagan is responsible for some of the most captivating horror shows and films of recent years. Apart from establishing himself as a genre luminary with projects like the inventive slasher "Hush" (2016), "The Haunting" anthology series, and the captivating gothic horror miniseries "Midnight Mass" (2021), he's also become something of a King adaptation expert thanks to "Gerald's Game" (2017), "Doctor Sleep," (2019) and "The Life of Chuck" (2024). In fact, "The Dark Tower" isn't even the only Stephen King project Flanagan has on his plate at the moment. In October 2024, we found out that he's also adapting King's first book, "Carrie," as a TV series for Prime Video.

Take all this into account, and it's a wonder that Flanagan still finds time to tinker with the vast entity his vision of "The Dark Tower" seems destined to become ... and, let's be honest, will have to be if it wants to truly honor the sprawling source material. The news that the project is moving steadily (if slowly) is encouraging and shows that Flanagan's eye remains on the ball. Perhaps one day, his "The Dark Tower" will finally be able to purge the abysmal 2017 movie version from the fans' minds.