No Dark Tower For J.J. Abrams

I keep thinking that the idea that J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof would be adapting Stephen King’s epic Dark Tower series was commonly understood as a dead deal. The last time Lindelof spoke about the project, in October, seemed pretty definitive: “My guess is they will get made because they’re so incredible. But not by me.” Now J.J. Abrams has weighed in on the subject with his own statement that is sure to crush the hearts of hopeful King fans everywhere.
MTV spoke to Abrams, who said “The Dark Tower thing is tricky. It’s such an important piece of writing. The truth is that Damon and I are not looking at that right now.”

I’ll take issue with ‘important’, but ‘tricky’ is definitely right. This is a story that very much lives on the page, and to put it on screen would have required an insane commitment, either to make multiple films or a long television show. I would have been intrigued to see how that worked out — I’m always fascinated by super-ambitious adaptations — but not all that optimistic. Creating a successful movie or television series on the scale The Dark Tower, even with King’s large readership to (possibly) rely on, seems like a real long shot.

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Nothing is sacred: Fright Night is being remade!

(from scifiwire.com) Goodbye cigarette-smoking, martini-drinking admen—hello bloodsucking, garlic-hating vampires!

Marti Noxon, writer-producer on the critically acclaimed Mad Men, has been hired to script a remake of Fright Night for DreamWorks, according to The Hollywood Reporter. But before you get all WTF, remember that Noxon was also writer-producer on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, so it’s actually a return to her roots.

The original Fright Night, released in 1985, starred Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall and William Ragsdale, with Ragsdale playing a teenager who discovers his neighbors are vampires.

We’d normally be worried about tampering with a horror classic, but since Noxon has entertained us with both teens and vampires before, consider us cautiously hopeful.

Just when you thought it was safe to take off that turtleneck sweater and put away your garlic, Twilight, Stephanie Meyer’s blockbuster series of novels for young adults, has taken the nation’s tweens by storm.

This month, the book series turned movie blockbuster continues its reign across a multimedia battleground with the release of New Moon, the second film in the Twilight franchise.

The films stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson as two teenaged lovers torn apart by the fact that one of them is really a distant relative of Count Chocula. While Twilight might have a legion of screaming teenaged girls behind it, it is not the only choice when it comes to teenage vampire films.

Last year’s Let the Right One In, a Swedish film based on the novel of the same name, may not have a cast of unreasonably beautiful people acting in it or a trendy soundtrack populated with even trendier musical acts, but the tender story about a 12-year-old boy’s relationship with a vampire girl still manages to have more heart and soul then the last ten years’ worth of vampire movies combined.

Both Twilight and Let the Right One In are warning signs, though, to a larger danger.

There seems to be a problem among today’s youth in detecting vampires in their midst. With Buffy the Vampire Slayer having been off the air for over five years now, who are our children turning to for advice in spotting bloodsuckers?

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What do you think of today’s movie news? Were you looking forward to JJ Adams making ‘Dark Towers’? What about the idea of today’s new vampires?