Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman (crack team who brought us The DaVinci Code) adapting a ridiculously complicated Stephen King series. This is gonna be a disaster. Especially for the later books when King goes off the deep end.

I think he was too busy with Star Trek and his other projects.

I have only read the first book so far and judging by the fact that it apparently gets far more complicated as it goes along, I'm not so sure about this series working in a film. A cable TV series, though...yep.

Two things I hope for: First, Roland needs to be an older actor, someone at least in their 40's, like Thomas Jane. Second, Susannah and her multiple personalities need to be completely different and less annoying. All her other attributes can be the same.

Seth Rogan for Eddie.

Wizard and Glass was the best novel.

This can only work as a TV series on HBO.

What if people don't watch the series, will they be lost when the sequel comes out? What about overseas audiences, TV shows usually air much later than in North America...

Well, i've probably answered my own questions, the TV series will be an added layer of story but not mandatory to understand the movies.

HBO won't do it right now with True Blood. I think it can work if done right. I guess we shall see.

Game of Thrones disagrees with you

Maybe because Universal finally learned how to control budgets after years of being shitty in that department and they realized that despite the potential the whole thing is way too risky since the whole movie/tv mini series/movie approach would be tried out for the first time?

I don't see blockbuster potential in this series (I haven't read the books, they look intriguing, but I'm not sure this is mainstream blockbuster material based on the synopsis) and I think it's smart they're checking the numbers for whatever reason. Though looking at the scope of the whole series I also think HBO-style approach would be better suited.

But I'd like for some other cable channel to try and do what HBO did with True Blood and Game of Thrones most recently. Competition is a great thing. Otherwise fans of some book series will always be dependent on HBO to decide to properly adapt the books they like.

Well when I said that I was including Game of Thrones since it was in production. HBO don't have the money to try three ambitious series simultaneously.

About the budget news, well this is nothing really hurtful yet. I think the movies will get made either at Universal or Warner Brothers. The series could make a huge amount of money so I don't know why Universal would turn it around, especially as they have done too great other than the last few months.

True Blood's budget is very cheap. I heard somewhere around 30 million per season. Game of Thrones(60 million) is actually cheaper to make than what HBO had in the past with Carnivale (60-80 million) and Deadwood(over 60 million) and especially Rome(100 million). Not to mention that HBO ran Carnivale and Deadwood in the same year. If not, Showtime should do Dark Tower. They really cant cram like 700 page book in one movie so Im glad its been postponed

Universal Pictures has pushed this year's start date on the Ron Howard-directed adaptation of Stephen King's mammoth novel series Dark Tower until February, I'm told. It was supposed to start this summer. The studio will work with the filmmakers to reduce the budget on a series that will include three feature films and two limited-run TV series.