With The Dark Tower heading to the silver screen imminently, now comes an update on the spinoff TV series that’s to follow.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, Glen Mazzara has been brought in as showrunner for the series. For genre fans, you’ll instantly recognise that name for Mazzara’s work on The Walking Dead; where he served as showrunner for part of the second season and all of Season 3. The only real details we’d previously known on this upcoming small screen adventure is that Idris Elba would initially reprise his Dark Tower movie role of the Gunslinger.

On this news, Mazzara himself said, “I’ve been a Stephen King fan for decades and the opportunity to adapt The Dark Tower as a TV series is a great honour. The event of The Gunslinger, Wizard and Glass, The Winder Through the Keyhole, and other tales need a long format to capture the complexity of Roland’s coming of age – how he became the Gunslinger, how Walter became the Man in Black, and how their rivalry cost Roland everything and everyone he ever loved. I could not be more excited to tell this story. It feels like being given the key to a treasure chest. And oh yeah, we’ll have billy-bumblers!”

The TV Dark Tower will overlap slightly with the movie, and it will itself be based around the fourth book in King’s famed The Dark Tower series, Wizard and Glass, which should serve as a prequel of sorts as it looks to elaborate on the origins of the Gunslinger and the Man in Black.

As mentioned, Idris Elba will have some involvement in the TV series, although it seems as if he’ll likely only be involved as a framing device of sorts, with a younger actor to be brought in to play the younger Roland Deschain.

The current plan is for a ten to thirteen-episode season to start production at some point next year. As for the big screen action, Nikolaj Arcel’s The Dark Tower is actually set to be released in some markets as of today, with a UK release following on August 18th.