Ron Howard Picks Up Stephen King's 'Dark Tower'

J.J. Abrams backed away from adapting The Dark Tower recently, saying in not so many words that it would be extremely hard to do right. As much as I'd like to see Abrams try, he has a point, and as always, not everything is cut out to be a movie.

But try telling that to Ron Howard, who along with right-hand-man Brian Grazer and frequent collaborator Akiva Goldsman, has secured the rights to Stephen King's exhaustive series of books. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Goldsman would write the script, Howard would direct, and eventually, the movie would lead into a TV series for Imagine. I'm not crazy about Howard directing it, not that he isn't a very competent filmmaker, I hate the thought of Akiva Goldsman adapting the book, but I love the movie-to-TV idea. TV's really the best way to go with The Dark Tower, at least in terms of spitting out that lengthy narrative.

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J.J. Abrams Backs Away From 'Dark Tower'

We covered this ground a while ago, when Damon Lindelof said he wouldn't be adapting Stephen King's Dark Tower, one of those projects so big it has to be a movie, but too big to actually be a movie.

Wait - who's Damon Lindelof again? Oh, sorry. He's one of the executive producers, co-creators, and co-writers of Lost, and his boss, J.J. Abrams, has the rights to Dark Tower through his Bad Robot production comp'ny. And, for a while now, Lindelof has been linked to developing this project after Lost goes off the air next summer. But he said last month he won't be making Dark Tower, and now Abrams tells MTV the movie won't be happening at all for a while. "The Dark Tower thing is tricky," Abrams began. "It's such an important piece of writing. The truth is that Damon and I are not looking at that right now."

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Damon Lindelof on 'Lost' Movie and 'Dark Tower'

Along with Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof is one of the creative heads of Lost at this point, even though most people still probably associate it with J.J. Abrams. With the final season looming (it will premiere in January and be broken up by ABC's coverage of ABC avoiding the Olympics before ending in May), USA Today threw fan questions at Lindelof about the immediate future and beyond.

In addition to questions relating to events in the last few episode - which, of course, he dodges in one way or another - the prospect of a Lost movie is raised again as well as Lindelof's rumored involvement with a film version of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, the rights to which Abrams' Bad Robot acquired in 2007. First, the Lost movie:

"I think it is our intention to end the story of Lost in the final episode of the television series. We have no desire whatsoever to make a movie or leave any threads hanging. That being said, some people will think it's enormously satisfying. Other people will think it's not satisfying enough. It all depends on the way that you watch the show. But the worst thing we could ever do is just answer some things and then say we'll answer other things in the Lost movie in theaters two years from now." "The television show is our version of Lost, and once it ends, that's the end. J.K. Rowling said she was going to write seven Harry Potter books, and she was true to her word. There are six seasons of Lost, and that's it."

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J.J. Abrams Says 'Dark Tower' May Follow 'Lost'

Lost celebrates its 100th episode tonight, with the eventual goal somewhere around 125 episodes. In case you don't know, it'll all wrap up next spring. And after it's over, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof may finally get to work on one of the more ambitious adaptations you can even imagine: Stephen King's Dark Tower.

Abrams' Bad Robot earned the rights to the project back in 2007, after Abrams and Lindelof met with Stephen King. And it looks like the day is nearing when The Dark Tower will move to the front burner. "Damon is obviously still on Lost, we've been working on Star Trek together," Abrams told IGN. "As soon as Lost is done, hopefully we'll get to begin tackling that."

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'Lost' Writer Damon Lindelof Wants to Make Stephen King's 'Dark Tower'...Someday

There are dream pairings in Hollywood only so often: Lemmon and Matthau, Hepburn and Tracey, Bogey and Bacall, Pam and Tommy. Surely, anyone with a nose for good drama thinks the combination of Stephen King and Damon Lindelof - one of the creative engines behind Lost - is a pretty good duo. Unfortunately, when Lindelof optioned the great unfilmed King classic, The Dark Tower, his eyes were bigger than his stomach. The writer-producer tells AMCTV that we shouldn't expect to see The Dark Tower soon, which is no big surprise; we've been waiting nearly 20 years anyway."The Dark Tower is to me every bit as daunting an adaptation as the Lord of the Rings trilogy must have been for Peter Jackson, except we've got seven books we're looking at," Lindelof admitted. "And the idea of doing that at the same time Carlton [Cuse] and I are bringing Lost to a close is simply not viable." He added, "There are always Dark Tower conversations, but the figuring out of what this will look like as a movie has not begun." So what does that mean on its surface? Probably that we won't see The Dark Tower in theaters for, what, five years at least? If Lost is running through 2010, which is the plan according to ABC, then it's safe to assume that Lindelof probably won't start configuring The Dark Tower until after the show goes off the air. That's two years. Then you figure at least a year, maybe two just to write the first film in a series that Lindelof dreams will include seven movies. Add another year or two for production and the perfect release date, and we're at 2013 if not as late as 2015, depending on unforeseen influences. Lindelof could farm out the script; after all, J.J. Abrams, Lindelof's employer, has done that sort of thing for several years now. If Lindelof just keeps his producer hat on while someone else does a draft or two to his specifications, then there's no reason the script couldn't be done by 2010, meaning a 2012 release date is a possibility. No matter what happens, I wouldn't hold my breath for this to make much progress in the next year or so, unless you're really, really good at holding your breath (hi, David Blaine).