The project has morphed over time, now coming to us by way of director/screenwriter Nikolaj Arcel, who penned the Danish film script for 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.' Perhaps it's only appropriate that the film's production mirrored the long and convoluted history of the books. Abrams' care (this was before he got pulled into 'Star Wars,' of course). A decade ago, 'Tower junkies' and 'constant readers' were told that an adaptation was taking shape under J.J. Today marks the release of the feature film adaptation of King's epic genre-blending and -bending fantasy series he's been working on since the seventies. He's an indisputable, super-influential icon - and if the leap to the silver screen (the movie is in theaters today) has you curious about King's 'The Dark Tower,' you should know that there's more to the series than books with those words in the title. Take a wild guess at how many times King's books have been adapted for film and TV and it'll probably be too low.

Today: Stephen King's 'The Dark Tower' series. In each volume, we'll recommend a watch/read order to approach the given series with and dissect our argument for it. There's always the chance that the new live-action series will spur new interest in completing the Dark Tower saga in comic book form.Welcome to Fan Service, a guide to engaging with gargantuan, lore-heavy franchises. The franchise rights have since shifted from Marvel to Simon & Schuster's imprint Gallery 13, but no further adaptations have been greenlit.

Unfortunately, Marvel stopped at that point, never adapting the entire saga.

Marvel continued to publish more Dark Tower miniseries after that, exploring more of Roland's hidden years leading up to the original Dark Tower novel and then adapting both The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three. That story culminates in The Dark Tower: The Battle of Jericho Hill, which chronicles the titular battle that destroys the kingdom of Gilead and sparks Roland's quest for the Dark Tower. That initial series was followed up by four more comic book miniseries that continue where the flashback leaves off and explore more of Roland's formative years. Basically an adaptation of the flashback portion of Wizard and Glass, The Gunslinger Born helps visualize a world that previously only existed in prose form and in a handful of painted illustrations.

Marvel Comics first journeyed into this universe with 2007's The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born. Both the Dark Tower comics and the live-action movie are worth consuming as companions to the novels. The Dark Tower saga may be rooted in the prose world, but it's also expanded into other media in recent years.

The dark tower books in order