20 new shows that could become the next Game of Thrones

The Dark Tower (Amazon)

Horror mastermind Stephen King’s eight-book Dark Tower series stumbled both critically and financially as a feature film in 2017 (combining stories from several of the novels). That didn’t seem to dampen Amazon’s enthusiasm for the project when they purchased the TV series rights in February of 2018.

Amazon has confirmed that the TV show will be a reboot featuring Sam Strike as lead character Roland Deschain (EastEnders) and Jasper Pääkkönen (Vikings) probably as the villainous Man in Black. Actors Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead) and Game of Thrones veteran Jerome Flynn (Bronn) are also on board. Although the original idea was to have the series tie into the 2017 film, that seems to have been abandoned. “The TV series they’re developing now,” King told Vulture. “We’ll see what happens with that. It would be like a complete reboot, so we’ll just have to see.”

The TV version of The Dark Tower will kick off with the events of the fourth novel in the series, Wizard and Glass (1997). That one’s a prequel, so it makes sense. MRC and Sony Pictures have ponied up the money to cover a 10-13 episode first season, while Brian Grazer and Ron Howard are among the executive producers.

Potential: The sky is the limit with Stephen King projects, but they can also misfire big time (see Maximum Overdrive). The poor performance of the dull-as-dirt movie is hopefully a sobering reminder to the showrunners that even popular King stories have to be executed well if they’re going to have legs.