Stephen King’s THE DARK TOWER will be three films and a TV series, according to director Ron Howard

Are you ready for one of the most ambitious multi-media endeavours in the history of the universe? Ron Howard (once child actor, now pretty-good Hollywood director) is adapting Stephen King‘s opus, The Dark Tower, into:

1. a feature film.
2. a TV series.
3. another film, following on from the TV show.
4. a second season of the TV show, based on the prequel comics.
5. a third film finishing the story started in the first.

Howard’s planning to use the sets built for the feature in the TV series, so there’s every chance The Dark Tower will be the best-looking thing on the small screen. If you’re worried the TV show might just end up as filler, Howard has these words of consolation for you:

… if you committed only to films, you’d deny the audience the intimacy and nuance of some of these characters and a lot of cool twists and turns that make for jaw-dropping, compelling television

I’ve never read a single book by Stephen King, but even I’m kind of excited by this. The setting doesn’t really grab me — western / fantasy / alt-history mash-up — but I’m sure there are some compelling characters, stories and themes somewhere in the seven books in the series to mine for the adaptations.

I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure nothing like this has ever been attempted before, and if it has, it certainly hasn’t had someone with Ron Howard’s clout attached to it. As a big fan of both feature films and serial-style TV shows, I’m very interested to see how this pans out.

Ron Howard’s finishing up his latest film (comedy The Dilemma with Vince Vaughn) before starting work on The Dark Tower. It’ll probably take a long time to get going; plenty of time for me to read the books, then.

read the full interview at Deadline