Carla Gugino in Mike Flanagan’s Next Stephen King Adaptation

SUMMARY

• Mike Flanagan, famed for his success translating Stephen King books, has the rights to bring The Dark Tower series to the film.
• Flanagan’s 2017 film Gerald’s Game made a subtle reference to The Dark Tower in a line of speech, implying a potential connection within his Dark Tower adaption.
• Flanagan’s past adaptations and meticulous attention to detail make him a reliable filmmaker for accurately capturing King’s themes and connecting his book universe on screen.

Mike Flanagan has the rights to adapt The Dark Tower series, and the filmmaker’s 2017 horror thriller is already indirectly tied to Stephen King’s plot. Along with Frank Darabont and Rob Reiner, horror expert Mike Flanagan is regarded as one of the few filmmakers who can consistently and accurately capture the essence of multiple Stephen King stories on film. While Flanagan is well-known for his Netflix TV series The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher, two of his most successful horror films have been Stephen King adaptations: Gerald’s Game (2017) and Doctor Sleep (2019).

Following his successful collaboration with Netflix, Flanagan has already set his sights on bringing additional Stephen King stories to the screen. In addition to Flanagan’s upcoming film The Life of Chuck, based on King’s 2020 novella, he hopes to adapt the author’s Dark Tower novels into a television series. While Flanagan’s Dark Tower adaptation has yet to be greenlit by a studio, the fact that he owns the story’s screen rights, has previously adapted King stories to critical acclaim, and is confident that it will happen alleviates concerns about his ability to fully bring the classic King saga to life. With Flanagan guiding the upcoming adaptation, it’s worth noting that his first Stephen King film made a subtle reference to The Dark Tower’s tale.

Several years before the filmmaker obtained the rights to adapt The Dark Tower in 2022, Flanagan made a smart reference to the story in his 2017 Netflix film Gerald’s Game. Stephen King’s novel Gerald’s Game, widely regarded as un-filmable until Flanagan proved otherwise, follows a lady named Jessie Burlingame, who is left tied to her bed in a lonely house after her husband dies unexpectedly of a heart attack. The film and novel follow Jessie as she struggles with her inner demons and psychological fights while attempting to survive her seemingly hopeless situation. Though Gerald’s Game’s film contained multiple Easter eggs and references to Mike Flanagan’s earlier works, it also referred to other Stephen King stories.

While Gerald’s Game’s book is linked to King’s tales Dolores Claiborne, Bag of Bones, and Lisey’s Story, there are no obvious references to The Dark Tower series. However, Flanagan included a sentence into the film that more closely linked the two narratives, namely, “All things serve the Beam.” When Jessie has a hallucination of a dead Gerald in the film, the character speaks directly to her, which occurs when he teases her about death’s inevitability. This remark is well-known to fans of The Dark Tower books, as it is regularly used throughout the series to allude to the six “Beams” that hold up the Dark Tower.

Flanagan apparently intended to include The Dark Tower phrase as an Easter egg for Stephen King fans, but the fact that he is now planning to adapt the novels lends the statement a new significance. This sentence could serve as a foundation for making Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game film canon inside his Dark Tower adaptation, much like how The Dark Tower novels give a subtle through line for virtually the entire Stephen King book universe. It’s unclear how the two stories would overlap further, other than through loose, indirect connections, but it does imply that Flanagan’s Dark Tower universe may officially begin with the 2017 Stephen King film.

With Gerald’s Game’s subtle reference already establishing the basis for a hypothetical Flanagan/King cinematic universe following The Dark Tower, another Flanagan adaptation would be a natural match. While The Dark Tower implicitly references several King stories, the novel series makes a more clear allusion to one of the author’s most recognized works of his whole career. The Dark Tower alludes to Danny Torrance, the protagonist of both The Shining and its sequel novel Doctor Sleep, which Mike Flanagan adapted into a film in 2019.

Additionally, Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep film has a poster of comic Joe Collins, who appears in The Dark Tower series. Similar to the Gerald’s Game connection to Dark Tower, this wink was most likely not intended to construct a connected film world, but it can be deemed one retroactively if Flanagan chooses to double-down on these links in his next series. Following the success of his “Flanaverse” on Netflix, developing his own connected universe through cinematic adaptations of King novels would be an exciting opportunity for Flanagan to enter the next era of his career.

Flanagan is one of the filmmakers most trusted with King’s writing, and there are several King stories that Flanagan might wonderfully adapt after The Dark Tower to preserve this – official or unofficial – universe. For example, Flanagan could be the finest filmmaker to try their hand at Insomnia, which is intimately related to The Dark Tower and the Crimson King antagonist. Though Max is planned to bring together numerous Derry-set novels for the next Welcome to Derry production, Flanagan would be an excellent candidate to direct Dark Tower-related stories such as The Stand, ‘Salem’s Lot, and Black House.

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