Stephen King's review of what went wrong with 2017's The Dark Tower proves the would-be franchise starter was always doomed. King's Dark Tower is an epic, fantasy Western novel series that ran from 1982 to 2004. It's one of King's (pun intended) towering literary achievements, but its dense mythology and mammoth scale make it difficult to adapt for live-action. After years of failed attempts by filmmakers like Ron Howard and J.J. Abrams, the long-awaited Dark Tower movie finally arrived in 2017. While Idris Elba received great reviews for his turn as gunslinger Roland Deschain, the adaptation itself proved a huge disappointment.

Serving as something of a sequel to The Dark Tower books, the 2017 film felt rushed - coming in at a scant 95-minute runtime - and lacked the scale and ambition of King's source material. There was a sense even Sony didn't expect much from it, with the studio enforcing a PG-...