The Dark Tower TV Series Cancelled by Amazon

Amazon Studios have cancelled the TV show adaptation of The Dark Tower by Stephen King.

The series was planned back in 2019, with hopes to put the focus on Roland Deschain, a young boy from a long line of ‘gunslingers’, but after beginning the pilot episode Amazon decided to let it go.

Showrunner Glen Mazzara (The Walking Dead) was developing the series, with two confirmed actors, one playing the protagonist Roland Deschain (Sam Strike) and the other, his enemy, the man in black (Jasper Pääkkönen). Others actors said to be in the pilot, but were yet to be confirmed, included Michael Rooker, Jerome Flynn and Joana Ribeiro.

Amazon executives felt the two pilot scripts for the Stephen King epic did not quite reach the quality of their latest TV ventures Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings. 

The Dark Tower TV series was originally planned to be completely independent from the 2017 film panned by critics, and promised to be a more faithful retelling of the book, taking place years before what was offered in the movie.

The Dark Tower is considered tricky to adapt thanks to the depth and breadth of the Dark Tower universe; the eight books span multiple genres and has stories woven in from other areas of the ‘Stephen King multiverse’. Because of this, Amazon had decided to go with a pilot rather than a straight-to-series order, a rare thing for a large scale production, and eventually Amazon executives passed on the lengthy project.

Perhaps another company will pick up the dropped show but it seems unlikely as so many production companies and streaming services have their own big-budget projects on the go with no room for such a big series.