Amazon Canceled This Highly-Anticipated Stephen King TV Show

Amazon Prime Video just announced that the stagnantly developing Stephen King TV show adaptation of “The Dark Tower” has officially been canceled. The long-awaited series has spent the last 5 years in developmental hell.

The rights to produce a TV show were given to “The Walking Dead” and “The Shield” creator Glen Mazzara back in 2016, during the production of the film of the same name. They announced the series was due to be released in 2018.

However, Deadline now reports that Amazon is no longer moving forward with the series after reading Mazzara’s pilot.

In response to the underwhelming performance and negative reception of “The Dark Tower” movie, the show began to shift gears pretty early on. Originally, the film actors Idris Elba and Tom Taylor, who played Roland Deshain and Jake Chambers, respectively, were set to reprise their roles, Entertainment Weekly reported in 2016. King told Vulture, following the release of the film, that they were probably looking to reboot the entire project.

Young actor Sam Strike was then recast for this fresh, new prequel vision of the Amazon series that would show a younger Roland becoming the dimension-jumping cowboy hero from the books.

Given the contents of “The Dark Tower” book series, the road to becoming a finished product was a lengthy one that first began with the film adaptation, which was first attached to “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” director J.J. Abrams back in 2007. Also, given how much of a flop the film was 10 years later when it finally released (also noting what a huge departure from the book’s original story it was), Amazon may have felt overwhelmed with pressure to get this one right -- a task that continues to prove itself to be very difficult.

Screen Rant notes that the upcoming “Lord of the Rings” Amazon series might be their main focus, as it’s had much more screen success. With “The Dark Tower” being a highly beloved series, however, they predict another studio picking up the reigns sometime in the near future. Producers are already shopping the two completed scripts to various studios.