Mike Flanagan’s CARRIE Series Could Open the Door to THE DARK TOWER

Mike Flanagan has spent a lot of time playing in Stephen King’s universe, and his upcoming Prime Video series Carriemay be doing more than revisiting the tragic story of Carrie White. It could also plant a few seeds for Flanagan’s long-planned adaptation ofThe Dark Tower.

Flanagan has plenty keeping him busy right now. Carrie arrives next month, The Exorcist: Martyrs is headed to theaters next year, and another King adaptation, The Mist, is high on his list of projects to tackle. Then there’s The Dark Tower.

Flanagan has been talking about bringing King’s massive fantasy saga to the screen for years, and the project remains alive at Amazon. In a new Entertainment Weekly profile focused on Carrie, Flanagan confirmed that The Dark Tower is still “very much on the table.”

What’s interesting here is his approach to Carrie appears to reach beyond Carrie White’s individual story and into the larger mythology surrounding the psychic abilities found throughout King’s work.

Flanagan said: “Carrie’s abilities aren’t named, really, in the book. He calls it ‘the TK gene’ for telekinesis, but if Steve had written this just a little later, Carrie White would have ‘the Shining.’”

It’s a cool way to look at the character. King’s books are filled with people who possess strange psychic gifts, including characters in The Shining, Doctor Sleep, and The Institute. Flanagan seems interested in treating Carrie as part of that broader tradition rather than keeping her powers isolated within one story.

The series will apparently explore that idea directly. Entertainment Weekly reports, “Each episode of Carrie, beginning with the second, will speak to the main character’s place within that larger world through opening vignettes that depict a different woman with extraordinary abilities from different time periods.”

That gives Flanagan an interesting playground. Those vignettes will expand the mythology of Carrie while also introducing concepts, characters, or connections that eventually lead somewhere much bigger. Like The Dark Tower.

When asked whether Carrie could provide a “backdoor entry point” into his adaptation of King’s epic saga, Flanagan said the possibility has crossed his mind more than once.

“I may have asked this very question several times along the way. It’s certainly not impossible. There are characters in the Tower canon who would serve a very specific purpose in that story, who audiences wouldn’t necessarily recognize because they only exist in certain books.”

That opens up some fun possibilities without requiring Carrie to suddenly turn into a Roland Deschain prequel. Flanagan could introduce someone connected to The Dark Tower mythology without announcing who they really are, allowing the character to function naturally within Carrie before their larger importance becomes clear later.

For readers familiar with King’s sprawling universe, that kind of connection would fit right in. The Dark Tower acts as connective tissue between numerous King stories, characters, locations, and supernatural ideas. Flanagan clearly understands how much material there is to play with.

“How the various Stephen King worlds can connect is always on my mind.” The big question is how far he plans to take it.

Flanagan’s eventual Dark Tower adaptation has a huge job ahead of it, especially after the 2017 movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey failed to launch the franchise many King fans had hoped for.

If Flanagan wants to start laying groundwork before Roland and the Man in Black officially return to the screen, Carrie could give him a surprisingly natural place to begin.

For now, nothing confirms that Carrie will directly introduce a Dark Tower character or storyline. Flanagan is simply acknowledging that the opportunity exists, and apparently he’s been thinking about it.

That makes those opening vignettes in Carrie a lot more interesting. King fans may want to pay close attention to who shows up in them. Someone who initially looks like a small piece of Carrie White’s expanded world could eventually have a much larger role to play when Flanagan finally reaches the Tower.