"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed........."

Looks like we are having some spirited discussion about Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. As of right now I am on page 268 of the seventh and final book of the series. You might say I am almost done, but the last book is 845 pages long. That is about 160 pages short of the whole Lord of the Rings (if you do not count the appendix section). Now, I am not trying to put down LotR one bit. I have a hard time standing both of these stories on the same ground. They are both excellent and they are both unique. I say that DT is excellent, in that I mean it is excellent up until page 268 of the seventh book. (Side note: Dave is that really how Flagg comes to his end? It was kind of disappointing if it is.) I have no reason to believe that the last 600 pages will not be the same. I want to point out something very similar between J.R.R. Tolkien and Stephen King. (I can hear people saying now, "How can that be? One is a Saint and the other is Satan." Grow up.) The Lord of the Rings and The Dark Tower series are life works. Almost everything published by both authors touches their life work. Go to any bookstore and you will see about everything under the Tolkien section has to do with Middle-Earth. In book seven of DT, which is called "The Dark Tower," the book listing in the front has all DT related books in bold. 21 of 47 of King's books are DT related. This brings me to my point. LotR and DT are life works, not the going fads of today or yesterday for that matter. This tells me that Tolkien and King did not write these to be the next bestseller. They wrote them because it was apart of them. This brings depth and quality that is not found in most books.

On to the DT movie issue. I have thought about this much as of lately. Movies take to long and depend on ticket sales. A miniseries is to short. The way to do DT is to do it like a TV series. One season is all you get no matter what the ratings are. It would consist of 24 to 28 episodes. This gives about 16 to 18 hours of showtime after commercials and all that jazz. That is the same as 8 to 9 two hour movies. This also should be plenty of time to GET THE STORY RIGHT!!! This works because many shows are becoming episode to episode instead of the stand alone episode. My best example would be the great show 24. DT would be fine in the budget of a show because their is not alot of special effects. Special effects are getting to be more affordable for TV shows these days (good special effects that is), I have been watching the new Battlestar Galactica. Tell me what you think? No matter what they do or do not do with putting DT on screen, it will never be as good as reading the 3800 pages.