Prime Video’s Upcoming Dark Fantasy Series Will Make Every Similar Show Look Small

Although Prime Video’s next epic fantasy series sounds exciting, the sheer size of the show’s source material would give anyone pause. It is always hard for TV creators to bring elaborate, immersive fantasy worlds to life onscreen. For decades, fantasy shows were infamous for featuring shoddy effects, unconvincing costumes, and limited scenery thanks to the limitations of their budgets, until 2011.

Luckily, HBO’s seminal Game of Thrones changed the game for the genre, as the cable network invested millions in each episode of the expensive, lush series. HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novel saga became an era-defining hit, spawning two direct spinoffs and inspiring countless major fantasy shows, from Starz’s Outlander to Netflix’s The Witcher to Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time.

While Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings prequel series The Rings of Power managed to make even the once-record-breaking budget of Game of Thrones seem modest, the streaming service’s next epic fantasy adaptation will be even bigger again. After a failed 2017 movie adaptation that was hated by critics and underperformed at the box office, horror cinema legend Mike Flanagan is set to turn horror literature Stephen King’s dark fantasy saga The Dark Tower into a Prime Video series.

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Saga Is Over 4000 Pages Long

Image via MovieStillsDB

While Flanagan’s first Prime Video Carrie was such a successful adaptation of King’s debut novel that the series earned a second season renewal, there is still reason for viewers to feel a little tentative about The Dark Tower’s upcoming series. After all, The Dark Tower books run over 4,000 pages in all, a whopping amount of source material that gives King space to create a truly immersive, complex fictional universe.

Compared to the 1000-1500-page run of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, depending on printing and formatting, and the approximately 3,500-page run of The Witcher’s literary source material, King’s saga is truly gigantic. Only Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire can come close to matching The Dark Tower saga for sheer length, and HBO’s Game of Thrones infamously struggled to wrap up that saga’s sprawling story in its final season.

Fortunately, much like Flanagan’s fresh take on Carrie saw the writer/director redefine a story most viewers felt they knew off by heart, the creative mastermind does already have a plan in place for how to tackle the sheer size of The Dark Tower. Speaking to Deadline earlier in 2026, Flanagan said that he hoped his version of The Dark Tower would run for five seasons and two movies.

Mike Flanagan’s Dark Tower Plan Can Tackle King’s Immense Story

According to the man himself, this ambitious scope would give Flanagan sufficient room to explore the story of King’s Dark Tower saga without short-changing the source books. It is easy to imagine this sprawling series starting out strong, since HBO’s It prequel Welcome to Derry became a massive hit with fans and critics alike by expanding on an already gargantuan King novel’s lore.

However, the big fear would be that Prime Video could pull the plug on the show at any point and leave its story frustratingly unfinished. After all, The Wheel of Time was canceled after only three seasons even though the show was a critical hit and its source material is one of few fantasy series that is even longer than both A Song of Ice and Fire and The Dark Tower combined.

Thus, even when Flanagan’s long-awaited adaptation begins, viewers won’t be able to breathe easy just yet. Instead, it will only be when all five seasons and two movies of Prime Video’s The Dark Tower saga are complete that Flanagan’s vision will finally, definitively be available to fans.

Source: Deadline

Release Date

August 3, 2017

Runtime

95 minutes

Director

Nikolaj Arcel