Wait, Brian Grazer says The Dark Tower is still happening?

I thought it was a done deal that the planned adaptation of Stephen King’s epic Dark Tower series was dead and gone, but now producer Brian Grazer is waving his hands going “wait, wait, wait!”

As it turns out, he says that because they were able to make significant budget cuts to the project, it could move forward after all. Wait, what?

“We found a way to cut out $45 million out of the budget without changing the scope and actually giving it a good ending. 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.”

This is even more confusing though, as surely he only means that for the first film, as you couldn’t make an entire film and TV series like they were planning for that price? How is the series going to be structured now? Are they just focusing on the first film, and seeing how it does before they press on?

Allegedly Ron Howard and Javier Bardem are still attached, but Howard has been scooping up new projects since it was announced the film was no more. I wonder if he can still commit, or even if he wants to with all the headaches surrounding this project.