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. Fans are anxiously waiting for updates on the status of that project – but when it moves forward, it won’t be the first time someone has attempted to make a TV series version of The Dark Tower for Prime Video. Five years ago, Glen Mazzara, Akiva Goldsman, and King himself developed a take on the material and a pilot episode was shot, with Stephen Hopkins directing and Sam Strike in the lead role of gunslinger Roland. Amazon decided not to move ahead with the series at that time… and for fans who have been wondering what the pilot episode was like, Mazzara has just given us a gift: he has posted his script for the episode online!
A PDF copy of Mazzara’s The Dark Tower pilot script can be found at The Stunt List.
While The Dark Tower served as inspiration for a disappointing movie a while back, the Mazzara series was meant to be a more faithful retelling of the novels. At first it would be telling Roland Deschain’s origin story – how he first became a gunslinger and got his guns, his first conflict with the man in black, his first love and his first mission as a gunslinger. Here’s the logline: Based on The Dark Tower books by Stephen King, young Roland Deschain investigates a treacherous plot in the town of Mejis, far from his hometown of Gilead. Here he finds love and learns of his true destiny.
Mazzara’s other credits include serving as showrunner and executive producer of The Walking Dead and executive producer of The Shield and Beacon 23. Pilot director Hopkins’ credits include A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, Predator 2, Judgment Night, The Ghost and the Darkness, and Lost in Space.
Sam Strike was joined in the cast of the pilot by Jasper Pääkkönen as The Man in Black and Michael Rooker in an unspecified but potentially villainous role.
Will you be reading Mazzara’s The Dark Tower pilot script? If you do, let us know what you thought of it by leaving a comment below.