I know a lot of eager book readers are going to be upset that this isn't a faithful retelling of the story, but I'm coming around to the idea that it would be for the best if it were not. There is just so much material, it all can't be done, nor should it. Some of the older stuff is also a bit dated, particularly any of the racial themes from the second book. There are also several parts of the book that seemed to be a bit contrived or Deus ex-Machina-ish; there's plenty that could be re-worked. Also, they were already going to get a certain demographic of fans upset by the casing of Elba. And frankly, as popular as this book is with core Stephen King fans, there aren't nearly enough of us that upsetting the apple cart would be a huge deal. Stephen King might be the world's best selling author, but I'd bet these books didn't have anything close to the following of stuff like Harry Potter, and it's not nearly as timely as all of those movies based on novel series of teenage dystopian worlds or vampires that were all the rage the last decade.