Summary
Mike Flanagan’s upcoming TV series,The Dark Tower, could finally bring Stephen King’s genre-blending saga to the screen the way it deserves. But to truly succeed, it might want to borrow a trick or two from another ambitious King adaptation: the 2018 TV seriesCastle Rock.
WithThe Dark Tower, Flanagan is taking on one of the most complex adaptations in modern genre stories. The book series is massive, metaphysical, and deeply connected to King’s larger universe. Flanagan — known forDoctor Sleep,Gerald’s Game,The Haunting of Hill House, andMidnight Mass— has already proven he can turn psychological horror into compelling TV. That gives him an edge, especially compared to the 2017Dark Towerfilm, which floundered due to its attempt to squeeze the sprawling story into 95 minutes. It stripped the lore, flattened the tone, and tried to turn King’s mythos into a bland action flick. It’s exactly the kind of failure that shows how a story this big needs a thoughtfully engineered structure to work. Andthat’s whereCastle Rockcan help.
HowCastle RockNailed Its Stephen King Remix Strategy
Hulu’sCastle Rockdidn’t take on any single Stephen King novel. Instead, it pulled from dozens of them, using King’s titular fictional Maine town as a sandbox for new stories steeped in familiar lore. The show built an original plot, while nodding toMisery,It,The Shawshank Redemption,The Dead Zone,Salem’s Lot, and more. And it worked — especially in Season 1, which balanced slow-burn mystery with unsettling atmosphere and layered characters.
WhatCastle RockGot Right
Why the 2017Dark TowerMovie Didn’t Work
Before Mike Flanagan took up the challenge, Sony tried to bringThe Dark Towerto life with the 2017 film starring Idris Elba as Roland and Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black. On paper, that cast had promise, but the execution was a mess. The film’s biggest misstep was its attempt to condense a sprawling, multi-book epic into a single feature-length movie. It wasn’t just a poor adaptation — itbarely felt likeThe Dark Towerat all.
The tone was inconsistent, veering between YA fantasy and gritty action without committing to either. Key relationships, like Roland and Jake’s, were rushed. Major themes about obsession, time, and the nature of reality were stripped away in favor of bland exposition. For longtime readers, the movie felt like a surface-level scrape without emotional or philosophical depth. For newcomers, it was simply confusing. The result was a film that attempted to appeal to everyone but resonated with no one. If anything, the failure of the 2017 movie is a compelling argument for the serialized TV format, where the richness of King’s vision can breathe.
The Dark TowerNeeds a Multiversal Storytelling Approach
Stephen King’sThe Dark Towernovels form a kind of gravitational center to his literary multiverse. Characters from other novels, like Father Callahan fromSalem’s Lot, appear in theTowerseries.There are worlds that connect toIt,The Stand, and evenHearts in Atlantis. This interconnectedness isn’t just lore — it’s a fundamental part of the story’s structure. For a screen adaptation to work, it can’t follow a book-by-book format. It needs to embrace the fluid, interdimensional narrative of the source material.
This is whereCastle Rockoffers a compelling structural blueprint. The series wove together multiple realities and timelines through layered character arcs and subtle thematic echoes. Episodes often dropped the viewer into disorienting narrative spaces, allowing meaning to slowly emerge. “The Queen” is a standout example, depicting the fragmented experience of memory through fractured chronology, making the viewer feel lost in time right alongside the character. ADark Towerseries could take similar risks, using a non-linear structure to represent shifting realities, alternate timelines, and the echo of ka (fate).
Flanagan could introduce characters like Father Callahan or references to Pennywise not just as Easter eggs, but as narrative anchors in parallel worlds. A side arc could explore the downfall of Gilead in a flashback-heavy structure reminiscent ofThe Haunting of Bly Manor.Roland’s past and Jake’s New Yorkcould be shown simultaneously through a dual timeline format. Even Susannah’s internal duality might be visualized through split narratives or symbolic mirroring across universes.
The key difference from the movie’s approach was patience. The film rushed world-building for mass appeal. A show can unfold slowly, revealing the Tower’s meaning not through exposition but through character experience. Letting the audience live in the story moment to moment until it all begins to coalesce into a bigger picture — something weighty, cosmic, and new.
Characters inThe Dark TowerWho Deserve More
The Dark Towerseries is full of unforgettable characters, ripe for deeper, more psychological treatment in a TV format. Rather thanrelying on their mere existence in the King universeor presenting them as fixed archetypes, the series could treat them the wayCastle Rockhandled figures like Annie Wilkes or The Kid: complex, evolving, and tied to broader themes.
Roland Deschain, the stoic Gunslinger, can be more than a human figure. He can be humanized through backstory and moral conflict, even early on. Jake Chambers, the time-displaced boy from New York, offers an opportunity to explore fractured timelines, echoing the nonlinear storytellingCastle Rockhandled so effectively. Susannah Dean’s dual identity provides a platform for a layered character study, especially through Flanagan’s lens of emotional horror. And Walter O’Dim, aka Randall Flagg, could benefit from a slow-burning build-up, reinforcing his recurring villainy in King’s works without needing immediate exposition.
What makes these characters special is not just their personal arcs, but how they echo and intersect with characters across the King-verse. A show that leans into this, rather than steering away, will feel both more like a faithful adaptation and a fresh take on the world.
The Tower Is a Myth, Not Just a Destination
One ofThe Dark Tower’smost important elements is the Tower itself, acting as both a real structure and a metaphysical symbol. Adapting that to television requires more than VFX and set design. It demands atmosphere, suggestion, and emotional weight.Castle Rockexcelled at this type of tonal storytelling. The town itself felt haunted and alive, not because of jump scares, but because of its history and what it represented.
Flanagan can treat the Tower the same way: an ever-present idea that shapes the world around it. Let it be something mysterious, something whispered about, something dreamed. If handled with restraint and imagination, the Tower can evolve from a distant goal into an emotional heartbeat and driving force.
Why Mike Flanagan Is Perfect for This Stephen King Adaptation
Mike Flanagan has already proven himself as one of the best modern interpreters of King’s work. WithDoctor Sleep, he balanced sequel and standalone. WithGerald’s Game, he made a “book too weird to adapt” into a Netflix hit. Even in his adaptations of other authors' works likeMidnight MassandThe Haunting of Hill House, he showed how horror can be entertaining, terrifying, and meaningful all at once.
The Dark Towerneedsthat blend of ambition and humanity. Flanagan’s writing team is known for emphasizing character over spectacle. If that same care is applied to Roland’s ka-tet and the Tower’s lore, and if they take a page out of theCastle Rockplaybook, this could be more than a good adaptation — it could be the definitive King series.
