Budget Cuts, New Ending Might Save The Dark Tower

Several months ago Comcast executives made the decision that Universal would no longer produce The Dark Tower movies and TV series after the costs were deemed too high. The decision was part of a collective series of decisions rolled out over months for all Comcast properties to scale down their budget to levels that the historically tight company find more acceptable. Decisions that will continue as Universal shifts from high budget films to smaller fair while non-reality TV series on NBC, SyFy, USA, etc discover shortened shelf lives with cancellation based on when actor contracts expire (due to corresponding rise in operating costs with renewals, see Eureka as example) rather than how well they are doing in ratings or return on investment.

It is because of this it might actually be good news that Universal took a pass on the series. Especially now that The Dark Tower producing team of Brian Grazer and Ron Howard with writer Akiva Goldsman might have come up with a cheaper draft that costs around $100 million while improving on the ending, according to an interview with Grazer to The Playlist.

“We found a way to cut out $45 million out of the budget without changing the scope and actually giving it a good ending,” Grazer said, suggesting a heavily re-worked approach. “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.”

The decrease in cost might be an effort to get Comcast to bite again or make it easier to get outside financing for making the film. It remains unclear if the team has retained their ambitious plans of a movie, TV series, 2nd movie, TV series, final movie. I suspect the effort will be to make just one movie (thus push for "more satisfying ending") and its success will dictate if the trilogy will be completed. The accompanying TV series will probably be eventually abandoned regardless if the movie does well or not.

In short, there is hope for fans but don't get too excited. Movement on The Dark Tower will probably remain slow for at least another year, assuming it even moves past the script stage.