Our first thought was he lied in every word, that mischievous producer with malicious eye askance... Well, lied isn't quite right, but JJ Abrams has finally put to bed the hints and rumours that he might be embarking on a perilous journey to Stephen King's seven-volume, incredibly epic fantasy series, The Dark Tower.
Talking to MTV, he confirmed his position that "After working six years on Lost, the last thing I want to do is spend the next seven years adapting one of my favorite books of all time. I'm such a massive Stephen King fan that I'm terrified of screwing it up. I'd do anything to see those movies written by someone else. "
Movies? We'd have thought a long TV series would be a better format, but even that would be insanely ambitious. Abrams' Lost co-producer Damon Lindelof had also been aboard the project, but said earlier in the year that watching Zack Snyder wrestle with Watchmen had given him the fear: "In terms of saying where can I digress from the material, I just get headaches thinking about changing anything."
So is there any chance of hope rekindling? Will Abrams ever relent, and turn aside once again into that ominous tract? "My guess is The Dark Tower will get made because its so incredible," he says. "But not by me."
In fact, we'd reckon that it probably won't get made by anyone for, if ever there was a King book(s) that was truly unfilmable, it's The Dark Tower, with its parallel universes, skipping timelines and characters drawn heavily from King's other novels... including, at one point, King himself. Brave and tinged with genius will be the man, or woman, who brings the story of Roland Deschain to the big screen without too much compromise. Is there anybody out there who can do this? Readers, your thoughts, please...