Corona | Coming Attractions

We haven't heard much lately about the effort to make Stephen King's The Dark Tower. As you know, plans to make the proposed movie installments at Universal Pictures were grounded when the studio didn't want to meet the budget requirements producers Brian Grazer and Ron Howard wanted.

No one expected that Grazer would solve the question of where the TV installments (two of which are proposed) would be broadcast first, but he has. The Dark Tower TV series will air on HBO, the cable choice for serious drama involving nudity, swearing and violence.

"We're going to do [The Dark Tower] with HBO," Grazer told us. "We'll do the TV with HBO, and we'll do the movie with… to be determined. We'll do it right."

Grazer revealed the news when MTV asked him during an interview at the Tower Heist junket. He also gave a little bit of news about the progress on the Dark Tower movies that are also being planned.

"We're going to do that movie," Grazer said of the first film which would kick off the series. "We've lost $45 million out of the budget. When people say no to you enough, then you have to lose money, which we've done without harming the scope of the film."

While Grazer didn't mention the actor's name, we should still assume that Javier Bardem remains attached to play Roland Deschain, King's gunslinger from Mid-world. While there were originally seven volumes in The Dark Tower novel series, Stephen King is writing an eighth new novel that takes place along Roland and his ka-tet's adventure.