Prime Video Officially Finds The Next Epic Fantasy Series To Rival The Witcher & LOTR

Published Oct 7, 2026, 5:01 PM EDT

Much like the mainstream success of FX’s anthology American Horror Story and AMC’s The Walking Dead franchise proved R-rated small-screen horror could be profitable, Game of Thrones showed producers that fantasy shows aimed at adults could be huge business. The series broke numerous records with its colossal season 1 budget, only to be later outdone by the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon and Prime Video’s massive Lord of the Rings prequel series, The Rings of Power.

The popularity of the Critical Role shows The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein, as well as the continued success of House of the Dragon and the second Game of Thrones spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, prove that R-rated fantasy TV is still going strong in 2026. However, there is soon to be a new Prime Video show that will be just as epic in scope as any of these earlier efforts in the genre, but with inspiration from a writer best known for another genre.

Mike Flanagan's Dark Tower Series On Prime Video Can Be As Epic As Anything Else In The Genre

As anyone looking forward to Mike Flanagan’s take on Carrie can attest, Stephen King is primarily viewed as the crown prince of post-war American horror literature. King is as totemic a figure in US horror literature as Shirley Jackson or HP Lovecraft thanks to the cultural impact of novels like The Shining, It, Misery, and, indeed, his 1974 debut, Carrie. However, King is also the author of an acclaimed seven-novel dark fantasy saga, The Dark Tower series.

Focused on the never-ending existential battle between the gunslinger Roland Deschain and the evil warlock Walter Padick, also known as the Man in Black, The Dark Tower is an immersive, complex story set between two worlds. The alternate post-apocalyptic reality of Mid-World exists alongside 1970s New York in the novels, and Roland encounters his young protégé Jake while pursuing Walter across the wasteland of Mid-World and into the reality of Jake’s world.

With doors to other realities, talking trains, Lovecraftian monsters, and an existential struggle to ensure that reality itself doesn’t descend into chaos, The Dark Tower saga is an epic in the truest sense. The novel series is arguably King’s most ambitious work, which is a huge claim given the complexity of books like It and The Stand. Of course, this also makes the story less easy to adapt than King’s more straightforward horror novels like The Outsider.

What Mike Flanagan's Dark Tower Must Learn From The Movie's Failure

In 2017, only a month before It's movie adaptation earned over a billion at the box office, a misguided movie adaptation of The Dark Tower earned a disappointing $113 million on a budget of $66 million. This bizarre mashup of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and western plot elements attempted to cram Idris Elba’s Roland, Matthew McConaughey’s Walter, and Tom Taylor’s Jake into a chaotic storyline.

Resoundingly rejected by critics, The Dark Tower was incomprehensible to newcomers. Purists were frustrated by The Dark Tower's movie truncating the novel’s patient pacing, while those unfamiliar with the book struggled to know what was going on in the overstuffed adaptation.

Fortunately, Flanagan’s upcoming The Dark Tower series is unlikely to repeat this mistake. Since the writer/director has the luxury of a runtime fit for an epic on the scale of The Witcher or Lord of the Rings, Prime Video's The Dark Tower can finally give the saga room to breathe on screen.