Just as there are whispers in the jungles of “Lost,” there have likewise been whispers in Hollywood that J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof — two of the masterminds behind the ABC television series — have been working on an adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel series “The Dark Tower.” Now, those whispers are getting louder and clearer.
“Damon Lindelof and I talked to Mr. King,” Abrams told IGN while promoting the upcoming “Star Trek” film. “We got the rights for [‘Dark Tower’] as a film. Damon is obviously still on ‘Lost’ and we’ve been working on ‘Star Trek’ together. As soon as ‘Lost’ is done, hopefully we’ll begin tackling that.”
For his part, Lindelof has also been speaking about the Stephen King adaptation. As “Lost” wraps up its penultimate season and gets ready for the sixth and final year of the show, Lindelof told Lostpedia that his entire creative energy is currently focused solely on the series.
“We’re just so focused on finishing ‘Lost’ that it’s really hard to think about anything else,” he said. “The last thing we want to think about is how to adapt a seven book series of, you know, basically the writer who we admire the most and look up to most and has inspired our work the most, and do anything with that. I think that it’s such a daunting task. We have a pretty daunting task in front of us ourselves [with the end of ‘Lost’].”
Still, it’s not as if the “Lost” showrunner hasn’t spoken about “Dark Tower” in the past. He previously told AMC that he envisions the series on the same scope as Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
“There are always ‘Dark Tower’ conversations, but the figuring out of what this will look like as a movie has not begun,” said Lindelof. “If ‘The Dark Tower’ were in the right hands, I would love to see seven movies executed just right. But you have to get people to see the first one to get them to come and see the second one.”
