Stephen King's The Dark Tower

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Variety reports that executives at Universal are having some doubts about Ron Howard’s ambitious plans to turn Stephen King’s "Dark Tower" series into a set of films and TV show.

Yes, Universal would seem to be having one of its budget panic spasms, the same sort of worries that ended up shunting Guillermo del Toro’s planned Lovecraft adaptation "At the Mountains of Madness" – which had Tom Cruise interested, no less – back into limbo.

It’s not really surprising that Howard, even though he had the backing of his Imagine producing partner Brian Grazer and Akiva Goldsman on script duties, might be facing an uphill struggle. The plan to turn the seven-book series (with more reportedly on the way) into a massive trilogy with a prequel TV drama filling in plot gaps is all but unprecedented and therefore difficult for the studio to figure out what it can afford to spend and how much revenue it’ll make.

And King’s concept, which finds a post-apocalyptic Wild West wasteland working in parallel to the modern world, is a tricky one to compress and sell.

But before you start ringing any alarm bells, no decision has been made and according to the trade mag’s sources, the project is still moving ahead for now. Javier Bardem is all but locked in to play gunslinger Roland Deschain and Howard is busy tracking down other actors.

While there’s a chance Universal could pull the plug and send the project into turnaround, Howard would still have the ability to offer it around to other studios, and it’s possible another company could come aboard in partnership to share the cost.

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The bigger the dream, the harsher the wake-up call.

That's the lesson Ron Howard, Akiva Goldsmith and fans of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" are learning today, as Deadline is reporting that Universal Studios has just put the kibosh on the huge and hugely ambitious adaptation of the wildly popular sci-fi series of novels.

Looks like Roland's quest to reach the Dark Tower is going to drag on a little bit longer after all.

Of course, the decision by Universal isn't a huge shock. After all, despite the fact that King's "Dark Tower" books have been perennial bestsellers for decades now, the plan to adapt them for the big screen wasn't exactly a sure thing. That's because, in a laudable effort to try and do the material justice, Howard and Goldsmith, who were on board as director and writer respectively, had proposed a unique arrangement that would have not only required a big screen trilogy, but also a TV series that would have run between films to fill in the gap.

In the end, though, Universal apparently decided that the project was going to cost so much money and be so difficult to pull off -- the plan was to film the first movie and the entire first season of the TV show at the same time -- that it was too big a risk. Because of that, they were only willing to make the first movie, which in turn caused Howard and his crew to back out; without a commitment to the TV, they felt the project wouldn't work.

It's a big blow for fans looking forward to seeing the story of the gunslinger Roland and his band of companions. But there is still some faint hope that another studio might swoop in and scoop up the project. It's unlikely, but hey, you know what they say.

Dreams never really die.