Stephen King Admits This Adaptation Was Hindered by its Rating

One of the qualities I respect most about celebrated author Stephen King is his willingness to admit when something doesn’t quite work. King has historically been outspoken in his disdain for the work of other creators. But he is equally forthright about his own output and about the numerous screen adaptations inspired by his writing. His unfiltered commentary has given us plenty to report on over the years.

Today, we’re back with another hot take from King as he weighs in on what went wrong with the big-screen adaptation of The Dark Tower.

First, just in case you’re unfamiliar with the iconic series, the setup goes like this:

Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), the last Gunslinger, is locked in an eternal battle with Walter O’Dim (Matthew McConaughey), also known as the Man in Black. The Gunslinger must prevent the Man in Black from toppling the Dark Tower, the key that holds the universe together. With the fate of worlds at stake, two men collide in the ultimate battle between good and evil.

In an interview with EW, the best-selling novelist was careful not to demean the project but made a valid point about how the PG-13 rating impacted the film. He said,

“The real problem, as far as I’m concerned is, they went into this movie, and I think this was a studio edict pretty much: this is going to be a PG-13 movie. It’s going to be a tentpole movie. We want to make sure that we get people in there from the ages of, let’s say, 12 right on up to whatever the target age is. Let’s say 12 to 35. That’s what we want. So it has to be PG-13, and when they did that I think that they lost a lot of the toughness of it and it became something where people went to it and said, Well yeah, but it’s really not anything that we haven’t seen before.”