The Dark Tower Movie Has Been Pushed Back

The Dark Tower, the first movie in a planned trilogy adapted from Stephen King’s eerie The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly/Tolkien-esque epic, has been delayed.

According to EW, the movie was originally slated for a Feb. 17 release, but has been pushed back to sometime next summer to give the post-production team the time they need to finish the visual effects. EW’s anonymous source was quoted as saying:

It’s a very fiscally responsible budget, and trying to stay in budget to make money and stay profitable means the VFX won’t be finished in time [for February]. Now that there’s more time, they’re not paying rush charges to get the effects where they need to be.

Another reason cited for the delay was to give the studio more time to promote the movie, a fair request for a magical, fantasy western that also takes place in New York City sometimes. Not having a single trailer four months before the movie was set to release wasn’t a great sign, but now Sony will have proper time to get audiences interested in King’s surreal Mid-World.

Except for the longer wait, this can really only be good news for The Dark Tower. Movies released in January and February are typically seen by the studio as cheap, quick cash grabs (too late to be eligible for the Oscars, but too early to be summer blockbusters), so having The Dark Tower slotted for Hollywood’s dumping grounds drew some hesitancy from Tower fans. Moving the movie to the summer shows the studio has confidence that the movie will be able to fare as a blockbuster in an increasingly crowded summer season. On top of that, giving the visual effects team (some of the most notoriously overworked and underpaid people in the great movie-making machine) more time to get the effects right isn’t a bad thing for the movie.

We don’t have a specific date yet, but you can look forward to The Dark Tower sometime this summer.