Stephen King on why The Dark Tower flopped at the box office
Stephen King has offered up his two cents as to why the recent adaptation of his book ‘The Dark Tower’ lost its shirt at the box office.
The movie made $110 million from its $60 million production budget, more than likely losing money once pricey marketing and advertising spends are added on.
For a movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, it should have done much better – and it didn’t help that it got panned by critics either.
Speaking to Vulture, the horror legend said: “The major challenge was to do a film based on a series of books that’s really long, about 3,000 pages.
“The other part of it was the decision to do a PG-13 feature adaptation of books that are extremely violent and deal with violent behaviour in a fairly graphic way.
“That was something that had to be overcome, although I’ve gotta say, I thought [screenwriter] Akiva Goldsman did a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie.”
King may have liked it, but the critics were less enthused.
It was branded ‘incomprehensible’, with Roger Roeper calling it ‘dull’, ‘mediocre’, and ‘stilted’.
By start comparison, the latest adaptation of King, the box office-smashing ‘It’, is still going great guns.
It looks set to bust through the $500 million mark this week, from its notably more modest $35 million budget.
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