Back around the time that Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Akiva Goldsman were first involved, there was lots of excitable chatter from the team about how the adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower would span movies and TV shows to do the story justice. And then the movie arrived. Little has happened since then, but the TV version is still alive, albeit with seemingly little connection to the film as Sam Strike is taking over the role of gunslinger Roland Deschain and Jasper Pääkkönen is playing his father, Steven.
According to Deadline, Amazon has now given the greenlight to a pilot for the series, to be overseen by former Walking Dead producer Glen Mazzara. The plan for the series is to turn back the clock and explore Deschain's origin story, taking place years before what we saw in the movie as it shows his first conflict with the Man in Black, his first love and his first mission. If the show is successful (not the highest bar to clear in terms of Tower adaptation), it'll then go on to basically re-tell some of the film's story, while drawing from the multiple books and other writing King has done about Deschain.
Strike was most recently seen in Netflix's Nightflyers and has a role in HBO's Chernobyl miniseries before returning as a guest star to Mindhunters. Pääkkönen was a regular on Vikings and, following a part in BlacKkKlansman, will reunite with Spike Lee for Da 5 Bloods.
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