I can't wait to see Gary Sinise delivering wooden dialog in a ponderously scripted and slowly acted set of face shots framed by an endless stream of commercials. It sounds ghastly. It is ghastly. It's.... horrible.

Of all the submissions, *this* gets the green?!

shiatty headline.

crypticsatellite: Of all the submissions, *this* gets the green?!

shiatty headline.

*fist bump*

Marcus Aurelius: I can't wait to see Gary Sinise delivering wooden dialog in a ponderously scripted and slowly acted set of face shots framed by an endless stream of commercials. It sounds ghastly. It is ghastly. It's.... horrible.

I believe a good TV version of a Stephen King novel (or portion thereof) is possible.

NeauxFear: I dunno, it's have to be done first for me to believe it. And if you cite "It," you're getting kicked in the nads. Awesome book, horrible miniseries.

The ONLY good thing about "It" the miniseries was casting Tim Curry as Pennywise.

Oh, and submitter? The ending to The Dark Tower was nowhere near as bad as the lame (figurative) castration of two of the most powerful awesome antagonists ever. One was turned into an impotent fool and the other a cackling senile old man with a bunch of harry potter toys. Lame.

/the ending had already been written anyway. The ending is "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning.
//but dammit, I wish he'd followed the story as sketched out in the *original* edition of "The Gunslinger"
///the new revised editions blows goats :(

Are they going to move when the story Wizard and Glass is told? The article says it will be the second TV season, but that means the first three books are the first two movies and first TV season.

It's going to be lead, subby? Leaden, perhaps.

nesler: Ryan2065: Are they going to move when the story Wizard and Glass is told? The article says it will be the second TV season, but that means the first three books are the first two movies and first TV season.

Each book doesn't get it's own movie or season. There'll be a total of three movies and two seasons, assuming this thing doesn't implode in a spectacular fashion.

Right... And if season two (so after movie 1, season 1, and movie 2) starts with book 4, they are planning on doing the story from Wizard and Glass to the end in one season and one movie.

TimeWaste: I'm nervous to read this thread because I'm only on Wolves of Callah. I'll be pissed if I read a spoiler.

/It's really starting to drag in the middle.

Spoiler, if you think it's dragging now, just wait.

nesler: Ah, I understand now. Hmmmmm. Good question. Honestly, my guess (actually, my hope) is that they'll allude to the backstory from Wizard and glass throughout the movie/tv series, rather than doing a full-blown flashback.

And my hope is they devote a whole season to Wizard and Glass and the comics. Wizard and Glass was by far the best book in the series, and it is the most marketable story-line.

Whatever, I'm watching this biatch. Ending was just fine by the way, and it's not like King didn't spend about 20 pages warning you about it and telling you to stop reading if you didn't want to hear it.

Flappyhead: Yeah the Crimson King ending was stupid, but I loved the way Flagg went out. To me it was a perfect death for the character, even if he had become nothing more then an annoying recurring villain by that point.

Only because of the downhill journey of his character starting in "Wizard and Glass". :(

I was happy when he claimed himself The Ageless Stranger in "The Wastelands", but from then on, everything went downhill, starting with his appearance in Wizard and Glass. The Ageless Stranger was supposed to be Walter's master (not Walter himself) and second only to "The Beast" (who I assumed was going to be the Crimson King, until that disappointment showed up). These were supposed to be Roland's two main barriers to the Tower. Walter was the first step. The Ageless Stranger was to be next, followed by the Beast, and then the Tower.

In some alternate universe, that story is being told properly. In our universe, it's more like Stephen King copped out because it was too big and complex a story to tell.

/if you have no idea what I'm talking about, put down your recent revised editions of "The Gunslinger" and track down a copy of the original
//the confrontation between the Gunslinger and the Man in Black is quite different, and I thought looking to make a much better story
///Yes, I do enjoy the Dark Tower series. BUT, I am also disappointed when I think about what it was looking to be and could have been, rather than the retconned current final version. :(

Precision Boobery: Also, what happened to the confrontation between Flagg & Thomas foretold in The Eyes of the Dragon?

And referenced in "The Drawing of Three". When Roland/Jack Mort enters the Pharmacy, there's a paragraph talking about cures and magic and such and how he'd only ever seen one real magician, named Flagg, with two young men pursuing him. It was a nice reference and really got my hopes up.

I was hoping there'd be more about that. In some alternate universe, there probably is. ;)

Precision Boobery: For those wanting Darabond to direct these, you know that the ending to The Mist movie was his idea, right?

Great ending. Stephen King is quoted as saying he wished he had thought of it first.

redeyedfrenzy: The first book sucked ass

You shut your whore mouth. :p

mamoru: redeyedfrenzy: The first book sucked ass

You shut your whore mouth. :p

The first first book isn't even published anymore. I read it back in the 1980s and had to order it from my mall bookstore cause it was a pretty limited release.

It was a very different book than the one currently available.

King rewrote it to fit into the mythology he made up later. Via Wiki:

Some changes include:

Removal of a reference to Roland reading a magazine in Tull. Later information presented in The Drawing of the Three suggested that paper is a scarcity in Roland's world.
Reference to twelve years having passed since the fall of Gilead, which happened when Roland was a teenager, is changed to "untold years." Otherwise it would be deduced that Roland is in his 30s, when later books imply that Roland is ancient.
Likewise The Man in Black originally says he is "nearly immortal," where in the revision he says this of both himself and Roland.
"[Roland] didn't know where Cort was[4]" is changed to "Cort was dead"[5], as the Fall of Gilead was not completely fleshed out until later books.
Roland's cold-hearted killing of Allie is changed to make him appear more humane. Originally, when the town of Tull turn on Roland, Allie is seized by a townsperson and used as a human shield. She begs Roland not to fire before he ruthlessly guns down both her and her captor [6]. In the revised version, she has been driven mad by Walter by the time she is seized, and begs Roland to put her out of her misery. [7]
The town of Farson is changed to Taunton, as John Farson was a character in the later books in the series.
References to the Beast were changed to refer to the Crimson King, who otherwise is not mentioned in the series until Wizard and Glass.
"Blue Heaven" and "Algul Siento", terms that are revealed in the final books, are mentioned.
A single Taheen appears early in the revised version. The Taheen being a race of creatures which wouldn't originally appear until the final three books.
A major textual change is the fate and identity of the Man in Black. In the original text, Walter's death at the end of the story is of no uncertainty to Roland. In the revised edition, Roland speculates if his discovery of Walter's bones is some trick or if he has truly died. The original text also kept Walter and Marten Broadcloak completely disambiguated. Even after the death of Walter, Broadclock was still to be found and killed. Later in Wizard and Glass they, along with Flagg, are all revealed to be one-in-the-same person. Though no reference of the name "Flagg" is made in the revised edition of The Gunslinger, all references to Walter and Marten are altered so that it is plausible they are the same man.
Jake, originally nine years old, was made 10-11 years old in the revised edition.
In general, the world the gunslinger walked through in the original text was literally a run-down version of our own - the text mentions England, the star Polaris, Mars, Jesus and other biblical figures, Easter, All-Saint's Eve (Halloween), and Greek and Egyptian Gods. In the revision, these references were removed to make Roland's world only vaguely like our own.
In the early edition Roland's father is Roland the Elder, but is changed to Steven.
In the expanded edition of the novel, on the last page before the text the single word RESUMPTION appears; in the "Argument" foreword of Wolves of the Calla, King explains that it is the subtitle of the novel.

Confabulat: It was a very different book than the one currently available.

I know. This is why I keep advocating people read it rather than the new revised edition. See my post up there regarding Flagg and the downhill trend of his character. ;)

So, to be fair, the *revised* first book does suck ass. If this is what redeyedfrenzy was referring to, then I will happily extend my apologies.

However, the original first book is fantastic. Not flawless, but still a great read.

mamoru: Confabulat: It was a very different book than the one currently available.

I know. This is why I keep advocating people read it rather than the new revised edition. See my post up there regarding Flagg and the downhill trend of his character. ;)

So, to be fair, the *revised* first book does suck ass. If this is what redeyedfrenzy was referring to, then I will happily extend my apologies.

However, the original first book is fantastic. Not flawless, but still a great read.

When I read the first book back in the 80s, I wasn't sure what to make of it. I was a huge Stephen King fan back then and devoured everything he had written up to that point (I think we were around Christine then). But that book was completely unlike everything else he had written. It was super weird and I really was sort of baffled by it.

The new version reads like a Stephen King book. Which isn't bad necessarily (I'm still a fan) but it lost that weird otherworldly feel in exchange for, well, Stephen King.