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Weed Road and Imagine Entertainment are seeking the rights to Stephen King’s seven-book series The Dark Tower.

An intermingling of spaghetti westerns and fantasies like Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings, The Dark Tower is set in an alternate world which resembles the Old West, but adds magic into the mix. The series focuses on a “gunslinger,” the last of his kind, a member of an ancient order. He is on a quest to find a tower which is a nexus to other universes. The series was published between 1982 and 2004.

Universal Pictures (who owns Imagine Entertainment) and Warner Brothers (who owns Weed Road) are currently competing for the project.  Plans are to begin with a film trilogy and lead into a television series. Right now, both are in the process of development. However, no deals have been made just yet.

Original plans for the film trilogy include the same group of people who adapted Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons from novel to screen. Akiva Goldsman is set to write the script and Brian Grazer to produce, with Ron Howard sitting in the director’s chair.

The Dark Tower has also been published as a five-part series of graphic novels from Marvel Comics. Released from December 2009 through April 2010, there are plans to publish all five parts as a hardcover compilation sometime this year.

King is also involved in the creation of a pilot for the SyFy channel called “Haven.” Adam Kane (The Mentalist, Heroes) is set to direct. They are currently under production in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, which is being used to represent the fictional town of Haven, Maine. Cast members include Emily Rose (of ER fame) who plays an FBI agent trying to solve the murder of a local Maine ex-convict. Lucas Bryant, Eric Balrouf, Richard Donat, and John Dunsworth are also set to appear.

Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment, who appear to be the popular studio of this week with their entourage of films, electrocutes some life into the remake of The Bride of Frankenstein. The polished version is being written and directed by visually intriguing director Neil Burger, the same man who penned and helmed the Edward Norton starring film The Illusionist. Peeled off from The Hollywood Reporter is the rest of the information:

“Bride” has had a series of stops and starts. About five years ago, “American Splendor” scribes Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini were attached to write the screenplay for the Uni/Imagine update. Their concept was to set the picture in contemporary New York, with a young woman dying and then unnaturally brought back to life (Burger’s version is expected to differ significantly from that concept). Jacob Estes, a writer on Spider-Man spinoff “Venom,” also at one point had been attached to write a draft.

Brian Grazer and Sean Daniel will produce the pic;  Karen Kehela, David Bernardi and Chris Wade will oversee for Imagine.

Sean Penn wants to go home.

Sean Penn, acclaimed actor and recent Oscar winner for his performance in Milk, decided to throw the career on pause for a moment and go back home for awhile. Dropping out of two high profile movies, Cartel and The Three Stooges, his personal life will be in peace but these projects will not. The first of the two projects, The Three Stooges, is a Farrelly brothers piece that has been in development for years and got off the ground big time when they nabbed their cast in late March. Now with the sudden loss of one of their main actors, and the oncoming filming date set for the end of the summer, the Farrelly brothers must scramble to fill up the slot of stooge Larry in time or fear for loosing other actors due to production push.

The second flick to hit the breaks is Asger Leth’s Cartel, a crime drama that follows a man who journeys to protect his son after his wife is murdered by Mexican drug cartels (The Hollywood Reporter). Now that Penn jumped off the feature, Imagine Entertainment and Universal Pictures are on the hunt for another lead.