Not to be outdone by Warner Bros.’ recent forward (and slightly northeasterly) motion on its epic adaptation of The Stand, producer Brian Grazer has popped up to remind everyone that he and Ron Howard were the first guys to have a sprawling Stephen King project that may or may not happen, so everyone should shut up and pay attention to them again. Grazer spoke to MTV about their unwavering plans to spread The Dark Tower out over three movies and two TV series—and Universal’s subsequent backing out of those plans as soon as it saw the returns on Cowboys And Aliens. But despite their rejection, Grazer remains confident that The Dark Tower will still happen sometime, somewhere, especially now that it has HBO on board to carry the TV element.
Of course, even with that sorted, Grazer still has to find a movie studio willing to back the feature film part of his ambitious Western fantasy, a genre that no one’s really excited about at the moment. To that end he’s already followed The Lone Ranger’s example by trimming $45 million from the budget—cuts that, unlike The Lone Ranger, most likely didn’t include any supernatural wolves, as there’s a whole book about those. But still, he might also consider getting rid of that whole “gunslinger” angle with Javier Bardem’s character and making him more of a, say, “group of sexy wizard teenagers.” Just offering some constructive notes there, Grazer-Razor. Do you mind if I call you Grazer-Razor? This is what's known as “the process,” Bri-Bri.