Mike Flanagan is undeniably busy these days. He has Prime Video’s Carrie series arriving next month, The Exorcist: Martyrs hitting theaters next year, and The Mist—another Stephen King adaptation—at the top of his to-do list. But there’s one King dream project that Flanagan has been dropping hints about for years: The Dark Tower, a sprawling, multi-book saga that will be a major undertaking once he digs into it.
When it’s finally time for Flanagan’s The Dark Tower to hopefully right all the wrongs of the 2017 film starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, the director will surely make an official announcement. But in the meantime, he’s got Roland, the Man in Black, and company on his mind, even while neck-deep in Carrie.
In a new Entertainment Weekly profile on Flanagan and his Carrie cast, he mentioned that his Dark Tower is still “very much on the table” at Amazon. How it could tie into Carrie goes along with his expansion of King’s story, which takes inspiration from the way King’s own literary world has expanded in the many years since his debut novel was published.
“Carrie’s abilities aren’t named, really, in the book. He calls it ‘the TK gene’ for telekinesis, but if Steve had written this just a little later, Carrie White would have ‘the Shining,’” Flanagan said. He also drew connections to The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep as well as The Institute, which similarly explores the torment and wonder of children discovering their psychic abilities.
EW’s article notes that “Each episode of Carrie, beginning with the second, will speak to the main character’s place within that larger world through opening vignettes that depict a different woman with extraordinary abilities from different time periods.”
So could that eventually pave a path, or a “backdoor entry point,” as the outlet puts it, to The Dark Tower?
“I may have asked this very question several times along the way,” Flanagan told EW. “It’s certainly not impossible. There are characters in the Tower canon who would serve a very specific purpose in that story, who audiences wouldn’t necessarily recognize because they only exist in certain books.”
He added, “How the various Stephen King worlds can connect is always on my mind.”
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