Universal has apparently acquired the rights to Stephen King's legendary The Dark Tower series. The adaptation will take the form of a trilogy of films (the first of which will be directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman) as well as a television series, which will air on NBC. Howard and Goldsman will presumably be involved with the series as well. Entertainment Weekly has the full story here.

Frankly, I was more excited about this when J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof were involved, but both have now moved on. However, Howard is a good director, the project has King's blessing and I'm not one of those people who automatically hate on Goldsman just for Batman & Robin. So like it or not, it's coming!

What do you guys think?

I'm not a huge fan of The Dark Tower series but I'll definitely watch these. The choice of director and writer seems like a, well, a safe move. Obviously I would rather have Darabont doing it but with Howard and Goldsman you'll at least get something nice and safe (and maybe a bit boring).

Lindelof is penning the Alien prequels and I'd rather have him work on those than The Dark Tower.

Big fan of Dark Tower (eventhough imo books 1,2, were the best while the rest were decent.) I didn't know about Ron Howard's invovlement. But I'm willing to watch this and see where they go with it.

I am a Dark Tower fan and I hate to hear this news... Especially if it hits regular TV. I always thought this series should be done on a show channel, perhaps Showtime or HBO. They could have made each book into one season. If they have to edit the things that can't be shown on TV it will simply ruin what would otherwise be a great series. It seems a lot of SK stuff gets ruined.

:-/