I’ve never read any of The Dark Tower series, and even though I’ve been obsessively collecting the Marvel Comics version of The Stand that’s been printed since September of 2008 (and is only 3 issues away from finishing), I haven’t checked out The Dark Tower comic series either.*

What I do know is that the movie adaptation encountered an abrupt Lone Ranger-esque cancellation earlier this year, after a ton of hype for the theatrical franchise/network TV show hybrid production. Apparently producer Brian Grazer has spent the last few months as deep in the books as Bruckheimer and tells The Playlist he has similarly managed to shave an entire (modestly-budgeted) feature film’s worth of dollars off the pricetag. Apparently that came with an unexpected side benefit…

“In the $140 million draft, the ending wasn’t quite as satisfying. Now, we’ve got $45 million, $50 million out of the way and a really satisfying ending. It’s gonna get made.”

Clearly this is pretty vague. We don’t know if he’s talking about the budget of just the first film, or overall. With the way studios are crunching those numbers (I bet Paramount is patting themselves on the back for starting up that sub-studio for micro-budget horror films) I wouldn’t doubt if this is just for the first film, and they’ll continue to shave off money from each subsequent entry.

I’m also looking forward to this “improved ending”. Anybody who’s read the ending to the final Dark Tower book, feel free to enlighten me about how it ends. Then again, as they say over at The Playlist, this could just be for ending of the first film, and not for the overall trilogy.

At least they were able to find a way to get rid of budget and enhance the film, rather than taking money that obviously was just going to be wasted on stuff other than, you know, making the film.

Give us your thoughts in the comments below…

*Coincidentally, this weekend while watching Storm Of The Century I spent some time on Wikipedia and fell upon Roland Deschain– now I’m looking forward to seeing what THE GUNSLINGER can do in the film or films.

Source: The Playlist