Mike Flanagan Will Never Have A Better Chance To Launch A Stephen King Shared Universe

Published Aug 19, 2026, 3:30 PM EDT Sean is a senior writer for ScreenRant and has been writing about new TV releases since December 2023. He has received multiple advance screenings of popular shows and ideated his own coverage read by hundreds of thousands of readers. Sean is a self-published author of a Western novel. Sean has also written award-winning opinion pieces related to local politics while getting his Bachelor's degree in journalism. Longtime Stephen King collaborator Mike Flanagan has a chance to unite all the prolific horror author's works into a single shared universe thanks to an upcoming television show he's adapting. Mike Flanagan is the most prolific director Stephen King has ever worked with. Flanagan has already made three adaptations of King's works — The Life of Chuck, Doctor Sleep, and Gerald's Game — and he's responsible for some of the best King adaptations this decade. Flangan's relationship with King is also only going to get stronger in the future. Flanagan already has three more King adaptations in the work, including a Carrie television show and a new movie based on The Mist. In addition to those classic Stephen King horror stories, however, Flanagan is also set to make an adaptation of The Dark Tower, the seven and a half part Western fantasy series that King himself describes as his "magnum opus." Mike Flanagan's upcoming The Dark Tower show is unique for a number of reasons. It's adapting King's longest-running and most beloved story, it doesn't fall under the traditional horror banner the author is best known for, and, most importantly, it could tie everything he's ever written together into a single shared universe. King's adaptations have always had an inkling of being connected, but The Dark Tower can create a very overt King cinematic universe. Mike Flanagan's The Dark Tower Show Can Connect All Of Stephen King's Stories Together The biggest reason Mike Flanagan's The Dark Tower adaptation can formally create a shared Stephen King universe is because that's what the books do. The Dark Tower follows a gunslinger known as Roland Deschain who is on a mission to save the titular Dark Tower from the evil forces of the Man in Black and the Crimson King. The whole reason Roland is so hell-bent on protecting the Dark Tower is because it's the linchpin that holds the entire universe, including all of King's other stories, together. Stephen King makes it very clear over the course of The Dark Tower's seven and a half books that Roland's home of Mid-World is at the center of the universe, and that everything else he has ever written is connected to it in varying degrees of separation. Roland and his ka-tet routinely travel from one "world" to another, which very clearly establishes a multiverse among King's works. The main way King shows how everything he has written is connected to The Dark Tower is through very direct crossovers. The Man in Black is also known as Walter O'Dim or Randall Flagg, who appears in The Stand and other books. Father Callahan from Salem's Lot ends up in Midworld and joins Roland's ka-tet in Wolves of the Calla. Jake Chambers' psychic powers, while called "the touch," are the same as Danny Torrance's "shine" in The Shining and Doctor Sleep. Most overtly, Stephen King himself appears as a character in Song of Susannah and directly interacts with Roland and his ka-tet. Song of Susannah alludes to the idea that Roland and Mid-World are real and that King's fictional creations later became real, and that his books cause actual events in Mid-World to happen. Song of Susannah also states that everything King has ever written has been at least tangentially related to The Dark Tower, as the Crimson King was trying to dissuade him from continuing Roland's story and letting him reach the Dark Tower. All of this happens in The Dark Tower books, meaning that if Mike Flanagan's TV adaptation gets to Song of Susannah, it will have to introduce a shared Stephen King universe. There's a chance that Flanagan could omit this detail, but given how faithfully he has adapted King's previous works and how important The Dark Tower is to King, that doesn't seem like a real possibility. In all likelihood, Flanagan's The Dark Tower is getting ready to create a King multiverse. Mike Flanagan's The Dark Tower show also wouldn't be doing something completely unprecedented by joining Stephen King's stories into a shared universe. As previously mentioned, many of King's existing adaptations already heavily allude to the idea that his novels all take place in the same universe. Like King's novels, they contain countless references and Easter eggs hinting that stories like Pet Sematary take place in the same world as Salem's Lot. References to other Stephen King adaptations even go beyond mere references, at times. In IT: Welcome to Derry, for example, Hank Grogan is sent to Shawshank State Prison, the setting of The Shawshank Redemption, though he never actually arrives there. Clearly, even adaptations of King's books have been setting up a shared universe for decades now, though they've only every connected some of his works sporadically. Mike Flanagan and The Dark Tower have a chance to not just reference other Stephen King works but actually bring them all together under the same banner and the same universe. Instead of references and Easter eggs, The Dark Tower can very clearly establish that all of King's stories do take place in the same world and share direct connections to one another. In short, The Dark Tower is a very exciting show for Stephen King fans. Birthdate September 21, 1947 Birthplace Portland, Maine, USA Notable Projects The Shawshank Redemption, The Shining, It, The Stand, Misery, The Dark Tower, Mr. Mercedes, Carrie Height 6 feet 4 inches Professions Author, Screenwriter, Producer, Director, Actor