Mike Flanagan Officially Confirms The Dark Tower TV Series' Book Adaptation Order & Structure

Published Oct 14, 2026, 4:37 PM EDT Jordan is the Senior Editor for Movies & TV News at Screen Rant. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Media Studies. An editor, writer, and digital media specialist based in New York City, you can also find her bylines on Business Insider. Jordan originally hails from Washington State, giving her an undying loyalty to any Seattle sports team, though she's also spent time in Virginia, Oregon, and New Orleans. She runs on coffee and classic movies, taking pride in having seen every film on AFI's 100 Greatest Films list and every Best Picture Oscar winner. Mike Flanagan has now confirmed the structure of his The Dark Tower TV adaptation compared to Stephen King's books. Following the successful release of his TV adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie on Prime Video, filmmaker Mike Flanagan has two other highly anticipated King projects on the horizon. In addition to directing and writing a new movie version of the author's horror novella The Mist for Warner Bros., Flanagan is undertaking the ambitious task of adapting King's "magnum opus" The Dark Tower novel series for TV. Though the series has yet to be officially greenlit, Flanagan has made impressive progress on the daunting show, with his approach to the structure and book adaptation order already being mapped out. During an interview on The Process Unlocked to talk about his adaptation of Carrie, Mike Flanagan revealed that his adaptation of The Dark Tower will begin with the first novel, The Gunslinger, and continue to tell the story in the same chronological order as Stephen King's books. Flanagan explained that King's structuring of The Dark Tower book series is "genius," beginning simply with two characters, the Man in Black and the Gunslinger, in a vague desert landscape before gradually building and expanding on the franchise's massive universe "one brick at a time." As Flanagan puts it, "That's the way to do it." His approach is "to do the books," following the outline and structure that King masterfully provided in the source material. King's The Dark Tower saga includes eight novels, which potentially means Flanagan's TV show would also have eight seasons following the books in sequential order. For the most part, the publication order of King's book aligns with the chronological timeline of the novels. The tale begins with 1982's The Gunslinger and ends with 2004's The Dark Tower, though King later published The Wind Through the Keyhole in 2012, which takes place between the events of the series' fourth and fifth novels. Still, Flanagan has now clarified that his series adaptation would begin with Gunlinger and build up to Dark Tower. According to Flanagan, choosing to begin anywhere other than The Gunslinger is where problems arrive with adaptations of The Dark Tower. King wisely introduces readers to the expansive Dark Tower universe on a smaller scale before growing, rather than sending audiences into this complex world face-first: Mike Flanagan: "The problem with the other approaches is people who try to jump in in the middle, or people who try to jump in at a different point. Because you can't throw an audience face-first into this huge universe. It's overwhelming. King did it right, he walked you in starting with two people and nothing else, and walks you one step at a time. So my adaptation was that. It was just doing the books, and doing them in order." Flanagan's iteration of the novel isn't the first time a filmmaker has tackled The Dark Tower universe, but it will be the first TV adaptation. In 2017, Sony tried its hand at the epic world with a more loosely-adapted The Dark Tower movie. The film, which starred Idris Elba as gunslinger Roland Deschain and Matthew McConaughey as Walter Padick, aka the Man in Black, received mostly negative reviews from critics while earning $113 million on an estimated $66 million budget. While there were reportedly early talks of a sequel prior to its release, another film never came to fruition. Many criticisms of the 2017 movie cited its differences from King's source material, but Flanagan is taking a different approach. The director confirms that, although "little changes" have to be made to fit the TV format, his take on The Dark Tower is "remarkably faithful" to Stephen King's books. Flanagan has his larger path for how to adapt King's epic fantasy saga set, but the horror filmmaker has noted that there'll still be a long wait before his Dark Tower series hits the small screen. Flanagan confirmed that he's already finished The Dark Tower season 1's scripts and that Stephen King is "very happy" with them, but the massive scale of the project means patience will be required in waiting for the studio's official greenlight. The Dark Tower First Film The Dark Tower Cast Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Dennis Haysbert, Claudia Kim, Fran Kranz, Abbey Lee, Jackie Earle Haley, Katheryn Winnick, Michael Barbieri Created by Stephen King Upcoming TV Shows The Dark Tower Movie(s) The Dark Tower Character(s) Roland Deschain, The Man in Black, Jake Chambers, Eddie Dean, Susannah Dean, Oy, The Crimson King, Stephen Deschain, Sayre, Tirana