Talking About Stephen King: Why was the film version of Stephen King’s ‘Dark Tower’ not based on the first novel in the series, ‘The Gunslinger’?
I haven’t seen The Dark Tower, but from what I have heard of it, I think the four screenwriters (Nikolaj Arcel, Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, and Ander Thomas Jensen) and the film’s director (Arcel) may have been forced by certain considerations to adapt the Dark Tower series the way they did. First, as Quora's Matt Reda points out in his answer, Stephen King’s series is made up by eight novels; seven of them are the main series, while The Wind Through The Keyhole (which King says is Book 4.5, and fits between Wizard and Glass and The Wolves of the Calla ) is a side jaunt written after the series ended with Book VII: The Dark Tower. This is a huge story, as big, say, as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and almost as big as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth mythology, which would include The Hobbit, The Lord of the Ring, and The Silmarillion. That’s a lot of story to tell! Ideal...