Ron Howard waits for Dark Tower to be greenlit

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly Ron Howard talked about the project The Dark Tower being moved from September to Spring 2012.

I can’t really say who’ll be in it yet, but Javier Bardem
has shown a great deal of interest.

Hm, so they have gone from wanting to announce Bardem towards “showing a great deal of interest… still hoping for the best.

The project would start with a feature film, followed by six hours of TV content, starring the same actors as in the movie. “There are elements of the Dark Tower saga that are more personal and can be best dealt with on television,” Howard continued. “TV allows you to roll out details of the characters in a more methodical way.”

Ok I am now wildly throwing numbers into the room that have no other basis than my own gut-feeling (except the 6 hours mentioned by EW):

2.5 hours for the first two movies plus 6 hours of season 1 makes for 11 hours of The Dark Tower. This would mean around 3.6 very long movies for 4 books (I, II, III and V seeing as IV is mostly flashbacks).

Then another series (book IV – two movies if they have also a running time of 6 hours) for the flashbacks and a final movie for books VI and VII.

According to unfounded calculation The Dark Tower would span 6.6 movies which is in my eyes more than enough to tell the story. Since this calculation has not considered possible rewrites due to budget cuts it could get knocked over very soon.