The Dark Tower: Stephen King explains why the movie adaptation struggled to work

King also commented on the upcoming TV adaptation

Stephen King fans had been waiting almost two decades for a major film studio to finally adapt The Dark Tower.

Unfortunately, despite an all-star cast — including Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey — the eventual adaptation was critically demolished.

Now, two months after release, King has commented on why the film failed to live up to the source material’s standards.

“The major challenge was to do a film based on a series of books that’s really long, about 3,000 pages,” the author told Vulture.

“The other part of it was the decision to do a PG-13 feature adaptation of books that are extremely violent and deal with violent behaviour in a fairly graphic way. That was something that had to be overcome.”

According to director Nikolaj Arcel, The Dark Tower was imagined as a quasi-sequel to the novels, furthering the story of the Gunslinger.

On the subject, King was relatively kind, saying screenwriter Akiva Goldsman did “a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie.”

For those disappointed by the film, fear not, as a TV adaptation of The Dark Tower has been announced, King saying: “It would be like a complete reboot, so we’ll just have to see.”

Meanwhile, the adaptation of King’s novel It has broken numerous box-office records, the sequel having already been given a release date.