Is The Dark Tower on Netflix?
Sony PicturesThe Dark Tower is Stephen King’s magnum opus – but is the movie adaptation on Netflix, and will the new series come to the streaming platform?
The original book series began in 1982, following the last surviving “gunslinger” Roland Deschain as he roams Mid-World’s post-apocalyptic landscape searching for The Dark Tower, an enormous sculpture that acts as a gateway to the multiverse.
While critically acclaimed and revered among King’s fans, its translation to the screen has been a bit… bumpy. So far, there’s been one movie: 2017’s The Dark Tower, starring Idris Elba as Roland and Matthew McConaughey as Walter Padick, aka The Man in Black, the film’s villain.
It was widely rejected, grossing just $113 million worldwide against a $66 million budget and criticized for compressing several threads of King’s books into a single feature.
Is The Dark Tower on Netflix?
The Dark Tower isn’t available to stream on Netflix right now.
Sadly, it can only be streamed on FX Now, or you can buy or rent it digitally (or purchase the DVD or Blu-ray) via Amazon Prime and other on-demand platforms.
Will The Dark Tower come to Netflix?
Not only is the movie not on Netflix, but the new TV series won’t be coming to the streaming platform either.
Originally, King hoped for The Dark Tower movie to get a sequel that’d be R-rated and draw on elements from The Drawing of the Three. Given its critical and commercial performance, these talks appeared to have fallen through.
However, Elba was set to reprise his role in a TV series that would have explored the mythology of King’s source material. In 2018, Amazon acquired the rights, at which point it became unclear if anyone from the film would return – and two years later, the streamer revealed it wasn’t moving forward with the pilot.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though: Mike Flanagan, Netflix’s famed custodian of horror with the likes of The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, is developing a huge adaptation of The Dark Tower. According to Deadline, it’ll be five seasons long with two stand-alone features to cap it off – but it’ll be on Prime Video.
“Predating our deal with Amazon, we acquired the rights to The Dark Tower, which if you know anything about me, you know it has been my Holy Grail of a project for most of my life. We actually have those rights carved out of our Amazon deal, which doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t get behind it at some point — you don’t know. But that’s something we’ve been developing ourselves and are really passionate about finally getting it up on its feet at some point,” he said in December 2022.
There haven’t been any further updates about Flanagan’s series.
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