by Brendon Connelly, Source: Bleeding Cool.com
Producer Brian Grazer and director Ron Howard’s have been planning a multi-part adaptation of Stephen King’s novels and comics cycle The Dark Tower to be spread across movies and TV. For a while now, though, it’s been looking rather like that other tower, the one in Pisa, leaning over – yet somehow never falling.
As he shops around for a new studio to pick up the tab, Grazer has been talking about the measures taken to make the film a more attractive investment. As you’d expect, these include an altered ending and a lowered budget:
We found a way to cut out $45 million out of the budget without changing the scope and actually giving it a good ending. In the $140 million draft, the ending wasn’t quite as satisfying. Now, we’ve got $45 million, $50 million out of the way and a really satisfying ending. It’s gonna get made.
Confidence.
Confidence that was perhaps bolstered by the support of HBO. Grazer has also been speaking to MTV, where he promised:
We’ll do the TV with HBO, and we’ll do the movie with… to be determined. We’ll do it right.
Javier Bardem remains attached as Roland Deschain, and if they can get things going soon enough, he’ll likely be in the movie.
It’s this new ending I’m most interested in. It isn’t clear, exactly, if Grazer is referring to the overall ending, or to the ending of the first film in the project. I can see how it might be the latter, with the necessity to strike a note of closure yet still make the upcoming TV episodes seem suitably essential.
Here’s the full MTV interview on video. You’ll notice that Grazer’s other hot topic is Arrested Development, which is now also being developed as a TV and movie hybrid. Odd fad. Are we going to see a lot more of this, would you think?
