It's because I love the books that I don't want to see them hurt.

So it would seem that The Dark Tower has been handed off to yet another team of Hollywood people. Yes, my friends, The Tower has been passed from J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Carlton Cuse to Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Akiva Goldsman. I've got nothing against any of them, and they seem to be saying a lot of things right now about movies and television series and movies connected by television series, but seeing as how this is at least the second group who have taken on this story, and the fact that the story has yet to appear on the screen, I'm not holding my breath that it's going to happen and I'm going to be able to sit back and eat popcorn as I watch Roland, Eddie, Jake, Oy, and Susannah make their way towards The Dark Tower.

In fact, I don't really know how to feel about all of this. I've always looked at the prospect of bringing The Dark Tower series to the screen with mixed emotions. After all, the darn thing took up just about six months of my life because I decided to read all of the books in order with no other books in between so that I could really get a good feel for it and remember everything. It was a great six months, though, and I'm glad to have read the books, and I think it was a series that I could actually say, "Yes, that is how it should have ended," instead of "Huh. So that's it? That's what you're going with? That's how you're going to end this? Ooookay. It's your series, I suppose." Plus, it really looks like quite an achievement when they're taking up almost a quarter of the bookshelf, but getting back to the movie, or television show, or whatever...

Now, I've always heard about the idea for a movie or series of movies, and in my honest opinion, I never thought it would work, and that opinion hasn't changed. The way I see it, you could probably do a movie for the first and maybe second book, but after that, the different parts of the story become very interconnected as things end in one book and then begin again, stopping only because you run out of pages to read, and then resume in the next book. Then there are all of the plot strings. Getting all of those to work in a movie, or series of movies, well, that would be pretty darn difficult and I'm going to come right out and say this: I think it would make the creation of The Lord of the Rings look like filming a cakewalk.

I think, and have always thought, that if this story ever made it to the screen, that it should be in the form of an HBO series, where you could take care of all of those strings, get everything in order and then meander down the path of the beam without worrying about how long it's going to take because if people are going to watch it, and if you do it well, they're in it for the long haul. I also think that HBO could handle the special effects that will be necessary. Also, by doing it as a series, while you're working on the beginning stuff, and taking into account that the show is popular and people are watching and you're actually going to be making a series that covers all seven books, you could concurrently film all of those backstory things so that everyone is still the right age and you have those parts when you need them instead of filming them as you need them, which is what would happen in a movie and would mean that either the characters would keep age jumping on you, or you'd have to keep recasting the roles, which I don't think is a very good idea and could end up being pretty darn confusing for the casual viewer.

Still, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself because no one ever seems to mention that if it did come to the screen, there are all of those other film rights, book rights, and property rights that have to get sorted out. I won't get into those, but you'd probably need more than a few lawyers to get them all squared away, if they can be squared away, and if you've read the books, you know what I'm talking about. Of course, that's taking into account that it would ever be done. That's taking into account that HBO would even want to do it and since it looks like they're gearing up to begin producing a show based on a different as yet unfinished fantasy series, I don't know that they'd exactly want to pick up the tale of the gunslinger right now.