You’d think that The Dark Tower — and by extension, Sony — would be in a lot of trouble right now. You’d think that everything that went on behind the scenes would alienate a lot of the movie’s potential audience. You’d think that its God-awful reviews would finish the job for anybody still holding out hope that a good movie might yet come of it. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.
The Dark Tower might have one of the most troubled productions of any recent blockbuster. While movies like Suicide Squad were infamously rushed into production without a script, The Dark Tower languished in developmental Hell for over a decade, swapping would-be directors as their interest in heading up the project inevitably fell by the wayside.
In 2007, J.J. Abrams — the genre visionary who revived both Star Wars and Star Trek for a new generation of eager fans — was attached to head up the film’s production. By 2010, Ron Howard had replaced him on the project, spending a full five years of his life trying to get the film off the ground. Finally, starting in 2015, the reins were handed off to Danish director Nikolaj Arcel: the man who, as of this weekend, finally delivered on the promise of bringing this film into theaters.
Sadly, the film’s problems didn’t end there. Despite completing the film, test audiences hated it, calling it confusing and incomprehensible. Sony had planned on firing Arcel and bring in another director to oversee the final cut of the film, although they ultimately decided against that option. Instead, they oversaw reshoots and editing themselves, relegating the film’s director to smaller and smaller roles within the final days of post-production.
The movie was originally supposed to be released to theaters in February: a nice, soft calendar date after all the holiday blockbusters, but before the ball got rolling for the summer. Its protracted post-production delayed it to July, and then again to its current August date.
It turns out that the movie fared no better with critics than it did with test audiences. Most have gone so far as to call it the worst Stephen King film of all time: particularly low praise when its competition includes Razzy winners like Maximum Overdrive, legendary duds like The Lawnmower Man and God only knows how many Children of the Corn sequels. More generous movie-goers called it “a very good trailer” that, like all trailers, was light on story and character development.
Either way, it’s 19% score on Rotten Tomatoes, as of this writing, doesn’t inspire much hope for it being worth anybody’s time (to say nothing of their money). And you would think that for a cash-strapped studio like Sony, desperate for a hit movie to off-set the $86 million they lost this summer, this would be terrible news.
Despite its drawn-out and off-setting production and terrible reception, it might still prove to be the steady money-maker than Sony needs to at least serve as a holding measure to stem their financial losses. Unlike Sony’s $200 million Smurf movie from earlier this year, The Dark Tower clocked in at a relatively lean $66 million budget. This means that it won’t have to do nearly as well as other blockbusters in order to turn a profit.
And that is an entirely reachable goal for the film. It has two highly bankable stars to draw people in, a built-in (and fiercely loyal) audience from the novels and even the official endorsement of Stephen King himself (something that not even Stanley Kubrick could get for The Shining). And with its August release date, The Dark Tower isn’t likely to face much in the way of competition from other movies: just Dunkirk, still going strong after two weeks in theaters, and Detroit, Katheryn Bigelow’s drama about the 1967 Detroit race riots.
Industry analysts are predicting it to open with a respectable $25 million stateside. Combined with other territories’ openings, it doesn’t seem likely to bomb the way a more ambitious movie might have. Sony, it seems, may have actually lucked out with this one.
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