If Ron Howard has his way, video games will be an integral component in the coming multimedia adaptation of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. “If I get to do Dark Tower, there's also a video game element that would be a part of flushing out the narrative of the Stephen King universe,” he said in an interview with The Huffington Post earlier this week.

The project, which seems to have picked up steam in recent weeks, will at least include a feature film, followed by a TV series on HBO before transitioning to a third film. Plans thereafter are a bit murky, what with eight books to work with and all. But the fact that one of the most influential men in the entertainment business is targeting video games as a vehicle for the project's narrative says something about the medium's perceived legitimacy as a method of storytelling.

The last we heard of any sort of Dark Tower game news was nearly a year ago when word first broke from unnamed sources that the project was, indeed, in the works. Now we have a source anyone can recognize: Ron Howard.

Howard's assertion that he wants a video game as part of the project's canon is only the latest in the industry's realization of the power of games as methods of storytelling. The Star Wars franchise is known for its meticulous approach to preserving the series' canon, providing developers with volumes of backstory, rules and inside information so as to keep consistency across the board, even if George Lucas occasionally comes in and upends the whole thing.

At least for now, Dark Tower fans can rejoice in knowing they will somehow take part in the tale of Roland Deschain and his ka-tet if Howard helms the project. Feel free to speculate how it'll look and play -- just imagine playing a variant of Red Dead Redemption in a world that's moved on.