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.