Like it or not, a Dark Tower film hitting the silver screen is only a matter of time.

I've been thinking a lot about the things that will have to be modified, edited, added or subtracted to the film; the one element that sticks out most prominently in my mind is the ending.

Roland being stuck in a loop was very heavily hinted at throughout the story - Ka, time is a wheel etc. - and a large part of that was conveyed through exposition and third person narration. We knew of the significance of the horn of Eld because Roland thought of it often, which means that by proxy we did too.

Movie audiences will have no such asset. Imagine this scenario - the final portion of the final film is being played out in the movie theater, we see Roland get sucked backed into the desert and reaching for, perhaps caressing the Horn of Eld, mayhap he mutters something to himself... and the film ends. Chaos ensues in the movie theaters.

The way I see it, the creative team can do one of two things:

1. Keep the ending as is, but have the Horn of Eld play a much larger role in the film. It will have to be mentioned and referenced often, perhaps to the point of ad nauseam.

2. Change the ending... perhaps the film takes place after "our" loop so that Roland is in possession of the Horn from the very beginning, giving King and the team free reign to go a completely different direction with the film's ending.

The more I think about it, the more I would like to see them go with option number 2. As it stands, I'm not necessarily crazy about the novel's ending (I felt it was a cop out), and this would be a chance to do something different, perhaps something King thought of between the publication of DT VII and now. It would be a very organic change, the nature of the story lends itself to it. Roland has gone through this loop a hundred, a thousand, or a million times -- who says it has to be our loop? Perhaps this time he did everything right and is ultimately rewarded... whatever that might mean.

What does everyone think?