I really couldn’t believe it when I first heard about it, but more and more confirmation emerges that J.J. Abrams, the guy who brought us Slusho Cheese Cloverfield, is really planning to handle Stephen King’s bloated epic The Dark Tower.

I tried getting into the Dark Tower series, and even as a guy who read lots of Stephen King books and saw lots of Stephen King movies and even counts as one of his great childhood memories the post-Easter Stephen King miniseries on ABC, that’s saying something.  Something was just sort of off with it–maybe I had a hard time handling the psuedo-Gothic western or just didn’t like Roland the Gunslinger much back then, I don’t know.

But what I do know is that that series is easily King’s biggest title ever–it makes The Stand look like a pamphlet–covering seven books and posing horror’s version of The Lord of the Rings for J.J. Abrams–along with cohort from Lost Damon Lindeloff–to take on.  Can he do it?  I find myself a bit skeptical, but only a bit.  Abrams has shown himself to be quite a talent, even if he hasn’t shown it as many times as, say, John Carpenter or longtime King cohort Mick Garris.  Frankly, I definitely would’ve rather seen Garris get the nod than Abrams, but we definitely could’ve done a whole lot worse than Abrams.

Can this be the new Harry Potter?  If the franchise is done properly, it definitely COULD become a franchise, with a new movie out every year for seven years.  If done improperly, well, look for the newest Stephen King resurgence to be a flash in the pan.

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