“I Kind Of Just Failed”: Stephen King Adaptation Writer Reflects On Poorly Reviewed Movie 7 Years Later

The writer of the Stephen King movie The Dark Tower acknowledges the film as a failure. The Dark Tower is a 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s popular book series, which featured a leading cast including Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Abbey Lee, Fran Kranz, Claudia Kim, and Ben Gavin. The Dark Tower was directed by Nikolaj Arcel and written by Arcel, Keff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jansen, and Akiva Goldsman.

Speaking with Collider at a panel at San Diego Comic-Con, Goldsman reflects on his experience working on The Dark Tower. Goldsman reacts bluntly that him and the team “just kind of failed at” their attempt at The Dark Tower. While working on the projects, they kept “shifting” and “everybody had a different point of voice,” leaving the film to be incoherent. The writer ultimately summarized the process as “a lot of significant hopes and dreams that led to not very much.” Check out the full quote from Goldsman below:

“I kind of just failed at The Dark Tower. It’s not that it got away. We just failed at it. We tried to put the pieces together, we couldn’t hang on, it kept shifting, everybody had a different point of view. So many of us had started it and lost it. By the end, it was a lot of significant hopes and dreams that led to not very much. That’s not exactly passing on a thing, but it’s a loss of it.”

Why The Dark Tower Is Considered Such A Massive Failure

The Dark Tower Did Poorly With Critics And Audiences

Though the King novel on which it is based is well-regarded, The Dark Tower received abysmal reviews upon its release seven years ago, garnering a paltry 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. Among audiences, the movie fared slightly better, but still came out rotten with a 44% audience approval rating. The Dark Tower was largely considered an incoherent, poorly plotted adaptation, so it makes sense why Goldsman would characterize it as a failure.

In addition to the poor critical reviews, The Dark Tower did not do well at the box office. At the worldwide box office, The Dark Tower grossed $113.2 million worldwide. On its face, that raw number may not seem incredibly low, but it is an underperformance when considering that the film boasted a $60 million budget. Once marketing and publicity is added, films usually need about 2-2.5x their budget in order to break even. The Dark Tower fell just below that threshhold, and thus likely lost money rather than earned any.

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The combination of the reviews and the box office total makes The Dark Tower a massive flop overall. While this was disappointing at the time for fans of the King property, the hope for Dark Tower adaptations has not been completely dashed. Acclaimed horror director Mike Flanagan is involved with a TV adaptation of The Dark Tower. This will give the franchise another chance at audience and critical acclaim, hopefully making up for the shortcomings of Goldsman and his team.

Source: Collider

The Dark Tower

Idris Elba, Tom Taylor, Claudia Kim, and Matthew McConaughey star in The Dark Tower, a Western Sci-Fi film directed by Nikolaj Arcel. Released in 2017, The Dark Tower follows a young boy with visions of an apocalyptic future in which a powerful man, dubbed The Man in Black, lays waste to the universe. The film is based on the Stephen King book series.

Director

Nikolaj Arcel

Release Date

August 4, 2017

Writers

Anders Thomas Jensen , Jeff Pinkner , Nikolaj Arcel , Akiva Goldsman

Runtime

95 Minutes

Franchise(s)

The Dark Tower

Budget

66 million

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