Universal mulls possible turnaround on Ron Howard's The Dark Tower

It was never a surprise that one day we'd get to see Stephen King's massive western/sci-fi/fanasy epic, The Dark Tower, brought to the big screen. What shocked me was the studio behind it, Universal. Why? It's been an awful couple of years for them, with damn near every major film they've released vastly over budget and performing terribly bad at the box office. If it flopped, then it was probably a Universal release. Things seem to have turned around a little bit with the massive success of Fast Five, but that didn't save the job of their President of Production, who got canned a few days ago. The Dark Tower is such a vastly expensive undertaking that Universal seemed like the worst possible place for it to wind up, and if Variety is to be believed maybe the studio is starting to realize that themselves.

Budgetary concerns have cropped up recently, which insiders say has Universal considring the idea of putting the project into turnaround. That basically means it would be shopped to other studios, either to take it over completely or go in on a cost-sharing venture. This isn't totally unprecedented, as studios often team up with others on hugely expensive, potentially lucrative projects all the time. It's just that The Dark Tower is intended to be such a big undertaking that I'll be surprised if anyone hops aboard. And let's not forget that Universal just totally dropped Guillermo Del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness due to it being too expensive. So there's some precedent here. The major difference is that there's a lot more earning potential for The Dark Tower than Del Toro's film, but again there's also a greater risk of failure. We're talking something that would be much bigger than even The Lord of the Rings was, and I'm not at all convinced it has half the appeal.

Universal is said to be pushing along as if everything is moving ahead as normal. Ron Howard's full plan for it really came into focus over the last couple of months when Javier Bardem was brought in to play enigmatic gunslinger Roland Deschain. The scripts would be penned by longtime Howard collaborator, Akiva Goldsman, with plans for three feature films and two full TV seasons. Guh.  Veteran film/TV/comic writer Mark Verheiden(Battlestar Galactica) was brought in to help flesh out the TV stuff.

Howard and producer Brian Grazer were aiming for a May 17th, 2013 release, but whether or not they'll hit that target date will depend on Universal's final decision.