Sci-Fi Storm

Producers James Wan (The Conjuring) and Roy Lee (It) want to take author Stephen King’s 1987 sci-fi/horror novel The Tommyknockers to the big screen.

THR reports the two will team up with Larry Sanitsky, who executive produced the 1993 miniseries adaptation which starred Jimmy Smits and Marg Helgenberger.

The Tommyknockers is set in the small town of Haven, Maine (a frequent setting for King’s stories), where during a walk one of the residents stumbles upon a metallic object stuck in the ground. It turns out that the object is in fact a buried UFO which begins emanating an invisible gas. The gas gives inhabitants of Haven enhanced intelligence to begin building things, but don’t really understand what they are doing, and appear to be controlled by the spacecraft.

The 1993 miniseries was successful for ABC. NBC announced development of a remake in 2013, but no mention of it was made after the announcement.

We finally have the first full trailer for the long-in-development mega project The Dark Tower!

The film follows gunslinger Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) and the sorcerer known as the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) who are on a quest to reach the mystical tower that stands at the nexus of countless dimensions, in a post-apocaplyptic Earth.

U.S. release is scheduled for August 4th, with the international release starting a week before.

The Dark Tower, the first film of the epic project from Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment, Sony Pictures and MRC, based on Stephen King’s series of post-apocalyptic fantasy novels, is getting the release date pushed back from February to June 28th, 2017. According to EW, this is to allow more time in post-production to complete the visual effects, but also will give then more time to market the film.

No official trailer has been released, while principle photography completed on schedule in July.

The film follows gunslinger Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) and the sorcerer known as the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) who are on a quest to reach the mystical tower that stands at the nexus of countless dimensions, in a post-apocaplyptic Earth.

The project is intended to be multiple films AND at least one TV miniseries, which is currently being developed for 10-13 episodes, although no outlet has been announced yet.

CBS has announced that actors Natalie Martinez (CSI: NY) and newcomer Alex Koch have been signed to star in the 13-episode straight-to-series Under The Dome, which is being produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and is based on a novel by Stephen King.

The series, set to air this summer, is about a small New England town that suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the world by a dome, and must learn to survive in post-apocalyptic conditions while trying to discover where they dome came from, and why.

CBS has given a 13 episode order – straight to series – for drama Under The Dome, to be produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and based on a novel by Stephen King, in which a small New England town suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the world by a dome, and must learn to survive in post-apocalyptic conditions while trying to discover where they dome came from, and why.

Neal Baer (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) will act as showrunner, with Niels Arden Oplev (Unforgettable) directing the lead episode.

If this sounds familiar, we reported on this over a year ago, when the project was set up at Showtime. Apparently the project was stalled there, so Amblin asked for it to be released and CBS picked it up in turnaround.

Ron Howard’s ambitious multi-platform project to being Stephen King’s The Dark Tower to life – originally conceived as a trilogy of movies AND two TV series – is looking for studio backing again. After Universal balked on the project a year ago, Warner Bros stepped in – but now it seems even WB has passed on it, despite getting an updated script from Akiva Goldsman and buzz about Russell Crowe interested in a lead role.

But another funding source may be in the hunt, with Media Rights Capital interested. MRC recently funded the Seth MacFarlane hit comedy Ted, and also the upcoming Elysium starring Matt Damon and Jodi Foster and directed by Neill Blomkamp (District 9). So for now, the project lives on.

This sounds interesting…Showtime has signed on for a project with Stephen Spielberg (who seems to be involved in a lot of TV projects lately) and Steven King for a TV series based on King’s 2009 novel, [asin=1439149038]Under The Dome[/asin], produced by DreamWorks Television.

The premise of the book is that the small town of Chester’s Mill, Maine suddenly finds itself inside a domed force field, cut off from the outside world. The inhabitants are then forced to find a way to survive.

Wasn’t there an Outer Limits episode with a similar story?

That ambitious project of Ron Howard’s to turn Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series into a combinations of films and TV series might have been a bit too ambitious – at least for Universal, who is concerned about the budget. As a result, the staff working on it have been placed on hiatus while Howard’s Imagine Entertainment and writer/producer Akiva Goldsman discuss the budget with the studio.

Could Universal be getting a bit skittish at big budget risks? They did balk at the $150 million budget Guillermo del Toro’s At The Mountains of Madness – but del Toro wanted to release with an R-rating as well, perhaps limiting the audience. But how can you do a PG-13 Lovecraft story?!?

In what may be the most ambitious Hollywood plans ever, Universal Pictures and NBC Universal Television Entertainment are planning to make Stephen King’s massive The Dark Tower saga into a series of three movies – and a TV series as well. Ron Howard will direct the first film and the first season of the series, with Akiva Goldsman writing and Brian Grazer producing.

Why are they trying to tap both formats at the same time? Howard told Deadline, “With this story, if you dedicated to one medium or another, there’s the horrible risk of cheating material. The scope and scale call for a big screen budget. But if you committed only to films, you’d deny the audience the intimacy and nuance of some of these characters and a lot of cool twists and turns that make for jaw-dropping, compelling television.”