Well if anyone can get The Dark Tower series to both the big screen and the small one, my guess is the combination of Stephen King and Ron Howard might be just the ones to make it happen. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the series, it is one that is near and dear to King’s heart as it began as his opus to Lord of the Rings and the great spaghetti westerns of his childhood when he was only 19 years old. He has been working on it ever since.

The epic seven book series is also inspired by a Robert Browning poem “Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came”. You really don’t even need to read the whole poem, but if that line strikes your fancy and you want to understand where King is coming from, read the poem here. In fact, do as I did- read it aloud. I grew up listening to Browning and still find his poems bring a shiver to my soul.

It must have done something akin to that to a young King for him to still be working on this series all these years later. I started looking into the books, as I am not generally a King fan, and was knocked out by these. I think the general tone of the books is set by the quote at the top of the webpage devoted to the series-

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

It is the opening line to The Gunslinger, the first book and it just throws you into it without a backward glance. Boom – you are sucked in and are never crawling back out until the man finishes it. No wonder he mentions people on death row writing him and begging him to just tell them how it ends. Damn – sometimes I forget this man can write like a son of a b$@&!

I am not going to bore you with the “he did this” and “he did that” because you can’t really tell about these books that way. They go wayyy beyond the concept of what happened next. This is the epic tale of Roland of Gilead, The Last Gunslinger and delves into many of King’s favorite topics over the years such as good and evil and the question of destiny.

For those who have had the pleasure of following each book as it arrives over the years, read the graphic novels so ably handled by my good friend Peter David and maybe even checked out the online story now commencing to unfold – the movie will be the icing on the cake. Two years ago or so Ron Howard announced his involvement in the project, with Universal playing as host for the event. It seemed a good fit, and when Universal announced a May 2013 release date, we all breathed a sigh of relief. We were used to waiting, after all.

We could wait for this, it would be worth it. Since the Oscar-winning trio that worked on “A Beautiful Mind” was back in place to put this three-film package together filled with the magic, monsters and mutants that Ron was almost salivating to do, how could we miss? And King sounded like he was on board for all of this.

In January of this year, word was out that Javier Bardem, an amazing Spanish actor with credits a mile long was looking at the lead role of Roland. He was perfect – we exclaimed. He even looks kinda like Clint back in the day. Then in April Mark Verheiden was named to the writing team, a man that had made his mark in television with shows like Smallville and Heroes. He got this kind of material – and we had him!

But in July disaster struck as Universal announced they had decided to pass on the whole project. They had been talking about a three movie deal that tied into a television show and the comics and books. It was the kind of project that the New Media could have just made glow. And they walked. Howard says he is still determined to do it – his production company Imagine is still part of the deal. But where the movie is going to be coming from – that remains to be seen.

But like I said- we are used to waiting. We can wait a little longer while Ron Howard, who face it knows everyone in Hollywood, puts a new deal together. Lord of the Rings took a while to come together – it will be worth the wait for The Dark Tower.