The Dark Tower: Mike Flanagan assures his Exorcist movie doesn’t interfere with Stephen King adaptation

Once set up at Netflix, Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy’s production company Intrepid Pictures now has an exclusive multiyear overall series deal with Amazon MGM Studios – and one of the shows they’re working on for Prime Video is Flanagan’s dream project, a series adaptation of Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels. Flanagan also recently signed on to make the next Exorcist movie for Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions, a move that caused some King fans to worry that he’s being distracted from his efforts to bring The Dark Tower to the screen… but during a recent interview on the podcast Talking Scared, Flanagan assured fans that’s not the case.

Flanagan said (with thanks to Cinema Blend for the transcription), “Oh, (The Exorcist) is not in the way. They coexist very well. I think the trick with The Dark Tower is just it’s still just takes an enormous amount of time to get going. But we’re further along than the last time we spoke. It seems to be moving on its own momentum. There’s so much logistical, boring, legal stuff that we have to kind of machete our way through to get that thing moving. But yeah, it has not at all stalled and none of the other work that’s that’s kind of emerged has in any way taken away from it.“

We previously heard that Intrepid was able to get the Dark Tower rights because Flanagan sent Stephen King “a very, very detailed outline of what I wanted to do with it. And it was in response to that, that he gave us the rights. A project like this, I wouldn’t want to be involved in it at all If we were taking it in a direction that was going to be blasphemous to the Stephen King material, but he’s been very, very supportive and very excited about what we’d like to do with it.“

Flanagan has said he envisions The Dark Tower story playing out over the course of five seasons, so here’s hoping that he’ll not only be able to get a first season of the show made, but also that he’ll be able to continue through the remaining four seasons worth of story. He has also said that the five seasons could be followed by two feature films, but he doesn’t want to get too far ahead of himself. The focus right now is on getting the series up and running.

Many of Stephen King’s stories and novels are connected to The Dark Tower in some way, but the Dark Tower series itself consists of The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, The Wind Through the Keyhole, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, The Dark Tower, and the short story The Little Sisters of Eluria.

While we wait to see when Flanagan’s The Dark Tower series will make it into production, his feature adaptation of King’s short story The Life of Chuck is ready to start making its way out into the world and his Exorcist movie is scheduled to reach theatres on March 13, 2026.

Are you glad to hear that Flanagan’s other projects aren’t getting in the way of The Dark Tower?