Even though Universal has officially passed on Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s ambitious attempt to adapt Stephen King’s The Dark Tower saga with a trilogy of films and two bridging TV series (see “Universal Abandons the Dark Tower”), the project is far from dead.  The New York Post’s Page Six reports that Howard is attempting to secure financing for the full project including the TV series.

 

But even if Howard and Grazer can overcome the wave of movie budget austerity that has swept over Tinseltown and buried such promising projects as Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness with Tom Cruise, or Gore Verbinski’s Lone Ranger movie with Johnny Depp (see “Disney Torpedoes ‘The Lone Ranger’”), production wouldn’t start on The Dark Tower until well into 2012 since Howard is busy until then with the Formula 1 movie Rush about driver Nicky Lauda.  But the good news is that Javier Bardem is still attached to The Dark Tower project to play Roland Deschain—let’s hope The Dark Tower project is as hard to kill as he is.