Abrams Loses Dark Tower to Ron Howard

THR's Heat Vision Blog reports that J.J. Abram's Bad Robot production company has lost the rights to Stephen King's The Dark Tower book series. Instead Imagine Entertainment, lead by the long time team of Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Akiva Goldsman are in discussion to secure the rights from King. The plan is the turn the seven book series into a three movie trilogy followed by a TV series.

Last year, while promoting the DVD release of Star Trek, Abrams said "The ‘Dark Tower’ thing is tricky. It’s such an important piece of writing. The truth is that Damon and I are not looking at that right now." I guess their inaction as Abrams is occupied with a lot of other projects is behind the reason for losing the rights.

As a fan of the series, I do not envy the person that has to translate those seven books into a film. I imagine the approach will be much like the Lord of the Rings where entire sections of the books will be skipped over. I just wonder how they will handle the ending (which has always been King's weakness) of the epic series.

Abrams Directing a Spielberg Project?

New York Magazine's Vulture blog suggests that J.J. Abrams next directing project will be collaboration with Steven Spielberg, who will likely executive produce the film. The untitled film, written by Abrams, is "“a tip of the hat to [Spielberg’s] movies of the 70’s and early 80’s.” This potential directing effort should not be confused with Mission: Impossible IV, Morning Glory, Fringe and Undercovers which are projects he produces but isn't directing.

Our sources tell us that Abrams is in discussions with Spielberg, and insist the DreamWorks co-founder will be involved in some capacity, whether as an executive producer or at least as an adviser, since “J.J. wants to make sure Steven is properly paid homage to. This is really an interpretation of some of Spielberg’s earlier films, but done in a personal way.”

“It’s kind of the anti-Avatar,” explained one source, “Not that [J.J.] doesn’t love that movie or special effects movies - he has a real facility for effects. But he really wants to make this, and the way to do that is to be fiscally responsible.”

Abrams probably will never confirm this story considering his love of secrets but TrekMovie points out it is plausible. Months ago Abrams had indicated that part of the reason he decided to produce M:I4 instead of direct was because he was working a script that he was interested in directing. In additional, a "fiscally responsible" project is unlikely to have a long post-production time which will give him plenty of time to direct the film, put it the can and begin pre-production for Star Trek 2. With all the balls in the air Abrams has, there is no telling how this could shake out until either a press release confirms it or he is behind the cameras giving orders.

Blog Update and Layout Changes

Believe it or not, I have not forgotton to update this blog. It's just that JJ Abrams' love of secrets makes it difficult to have regular updates. I am sure he is a very busy man, he just doesn't like the rest us know to know exactly what he is working on.

I could make this blog all about Fringe but honestly there is no point. One, I don't have the interest and two, there are a whole lot of better blogs that keep up with that TV series better then I ever could. That is why I link to them.

This leads me to the main point of this post. As you may have noticed this blog's look has changed completely. Recently Blogger added some template changes that I thought I would test out and this blog seemed perfect for that. After many hours of tweaking the code (really wish they would make goofing with width and padding easy) here are the results.

So what I need from you is your opinion. What do you think? What can I change? Different background, no background? Colors not right? Whatever you think, please let me know by emailing me or in the comments. If this becomes easy enough to tweak and use, I plan to spread it to the other blogs.