Mike Flanagan Gives Exciting New Update On Stephen King The Dark Tower Adaptation

Published Sep 11, 2026, 11:48 AM EDT

Jordan is the Senior Editor for Movies & TV News at Screen Rant. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Media Studies. An editor, writer, and digital media specialist based in New York City, you can also find her bylines on Business Insider.

Jordan originally hails from Washington State, giving her an undying loyalty to any Seattle sports team, though she's also spent time in Virginia, Oregon, and New Orleans. She runs on coffee and classic movies, taking pride in having seen every film on AFI's 100 Greatest Films list and every Best Picture Oscar winner.

The next adaptation of Stephen King's epic fantasy series is gearing up for a massive scale.

After being turned into a film by Sony in 2017 with disappointing reviews, Stephen King's "magnum opus" The Dark Tower book series has a new highly-anticipated adaptation on the horizon. In December 2022, it was reported that filmmaker Mike Flanagan won the TV rights for The Dark Tower, following his acclaimed film adaptations of King's novels Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep.

Since then, Flanagan has revealed some exciting writing milestones for The Dark Tower show. But, since the series has yet to be officially greenlit, the filmmaker continues to receive numerous inquiries for updates as he releases other King adaptations like The Life of Chuck film and Carrie TV series.

Following the release of Carrie's official trailer, Mike Flanagan has now offered a new update on the status of his Dark Tower TV show. In the same response to two users on Bluesky, Flanagan stated, "It's the biggest thing I've ever worked on but we're making progress. :)." Given the massive scale of the books themselves, bringing King's vision to life for a TV series is a mammoth task for Flanagan to tackle, and getting it right means taking more time and care with the material before getting the official greenlight.

Stephen King's neo-Western dark fantasy The Dark Tower series consists of eight books, beginning with the 1982 novel The Gunslinger, which follows the last gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and those he comes across throughout the desert, such as a boy named Jake and a woman named Alice, during his search for his adversary, The Man in Black. The subsequent novels include The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, The Wind Through the Keyhole, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower.

While Mike Flanagan owning the rights for The Dark Tower predated his new first-look TV deal with Amazon, it's still expected that his adaptation will be under Prime Video when it's finally given a series order. Flanagan is releasing his Carrie TV show on Prime Video on October 7, and is also reportedly in talks to serve as an executive producer on Amazon's Warhammer 40k series.

In February 2026, Flanagan confirmed that he had finished The Dark Tower season 1's scripts, noting that they're "wonderful" while revealing that author Stephen King had already read the scripts and was "very happy with them." Though Flanagan's early season 1 episode scripts are done, the filmmaker has frequently noted that getting The Dark Tower show onto the small screen will take "a long time," so patience will continue to be key as he tackles the epic eight-novel series.

Before The Dark Tower show arrives, however, Flanagan and King have a few other exciting projects in the works. After all eight episodes of Carrie release in October, Flanagan is set to direct and write a film adaptation of Stephen King's novella The Mist in collaboration with the author. King also recently praised Flanagan's new adaptation of Carrie, calling the series "brilliant" and commending its message about social media as "shocking and true."

The Dark Tower