Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Being the resident Dark Tower nerd in these parts I wanted to comment on the movements in Roland Deschain's reality.

The big movie news is that JJ Abrams commented to MTV that he wasn't looking at The Dark Tower anymore. Here's the quote:

"You'll be hard-pressed to find a huger fan of 'The Dark Tower' than me, but that's probably the reason that I shouldn't be the one to adapt it," he revealed. "After working six years on 'Lost,' the last thing I want to do is spend the next seven years adapting one of my favorite books of all time. I'm such a massive Stephen King fan that I'm terrified of screwing it up. I'd do anything to see those movies written by someone else. My guess is they will get made because they're so incredible. But not by me."

I see where he's coming from as a Dark Tower fan... it's a damn hard adaptation, especially getting into the later books. That said I was kind of interested to see how someone with the power JJ Abrams has after such a successful run would bring about the adaptation.

I can't imagine a studio ponying up the budget these films would need while keeping the harshness of the world. I mean... there's demon-rape in these books. Not exactly big-budget friendly PG-13 material.

Maybe some day someone will be able to convince HBO to fully finance and execute this as a limited series.

And if that day comes it'll surely be after Stephen King writes another Dark Tower book, something I didn't think would ever happen.

Apparently at a talk/book signing for his newest, Under the Dome (which I'm 100 pages into at the moment and loving the hell out of), King was asked about revisiting the Dark Tower universe and he said he wanted to write one more book that takes place between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla.

The moderator of the Stephen King message board confirmed this and elaborated:

Stephen has given me permission to pass along that he has an idea for a new Dark Tower book, the working title of which will be THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE. He has not yet started this book and anticipates that it will be a minimum of eight months before he is able to begin writing it.

Is it time to dance in the streets? Maybe for me. That period between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla is significant... it's when King was hit by the van and almost died. The tone of the series shifted there.

So, I wonder if that means we get more of the Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake and Oy ka-tet story or if we get more of Roland, Cuthbert and Alain. I hope for more of the previous as the Dark Tower comics from Marvel have covered a ton of the latter. I've always felt that there were adventures on the road to the Calla that went untold.

The always dependable Stephen King fansite Lilja's Library has video from the event which I've embedded below. It also includes King saying that Under the Dome will be made at HBO (be successful and maybe we'll see Dark Tower!), King's new comic book American Vampire, the possibility of one more Bachman manuscript lying around and that he wrote a script for CELL. "I got so many complaints about the end of the book that I changed everything." (Anybody have a copy of that?!? I'd kill to read it! Not literally, but almost!)

So, have a palaver below and talk about all this exciting Stephen King news!

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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