Stephen King's The Dark Tower - (2017, D: Arcel) S: Elba, McConaughey
#251
DVD Talk Legend
re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
I wonder how they'd deal with the Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Green Goblin, etc references from the 4th(??) book?
#253
re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
Ready Player One has the same problem. They had to change a lot of tv shows and movies around that came from the studio that's releasing the movie. They might end up doing the same for DT.
#254
Senior Member
re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
Some late breaking news!!!
http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/0...e-plans-ahead/
Ka is a wheel and that wheel has spun long and slow for the proposed film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. For almost a decade, producers Akiva Goldsman, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Erica Huggins have effortlessly tried to bring the popular novels to the silver screen. Now, Sony and MRC are coming together to produce and co-finance what they hope to be their latest franchise for film and television (via The Hollywood Reporter).
The series follows gunslinger Roland Deschain, who must travel through an alternate universe full of magic and evil forces to reach the mysterious and all-encompassing Dark Tower. King penned the first book, The Gunslinger, in 1982 and published six more entries over two decades, concluding with 2004’s The Dark Tower. He has since revisited the world with his other works, in addition to side stories and a 2012 companion novel.
Both Sony and MRC hope to spread out the story over various films and an accompanying TV series — similar to what the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been doing lately. Goldsman and screenwriter Jeff Pinkner have rewritten their script of The Gunslinger and the search has begun for a filmmaker. As of now, it’s unclear whether Russell Crowe, who was once attached to the role of Deschain, is still involved.
“There are few projects out there that compare with the scope, vision, complex characters and fully drawn world that Stephen King has created with The Dark Tower,” said Tom Rothman, the new chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group. “I am a giant fan. And, as Stephen himself does, we love the direction that Akiva and Jeff have taken. This is a great opportunity for a director to put his or her stamp on a cool global franchise.”
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t5c-LVYnafg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/0...e-plans-ahead/
Ka is a wheel and that wheel has spun long and slow for the proposed film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. For almost a decade, producers Akiva Goldsman, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Erica Huggins have effortlessly tried to bring the popular novels to the silver screen. Now, Sony and MRC are coming together to produce and co-finance what they hope to be their latest franchise for film and television (via The Hollywood Reporter).
The series follows gunslinger Roland Deschain, who must travel through an alternate universe full of magic and evil forces to reach the mysterious and all-encompassing Dark Tower. King penned the first book, The Gunslinger, in 1982 and published six more entries over two decades, concluding with 2004’s The Dark Tower. He has since revisited the world with his other works, in addition to side stories and a 2012 companion novel.
Both Sony and MRC hope to spread out the story over various films and an accompanying TV series — similar to what the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been doing lately. Goldsman and screenwriter Jeff Pinkner have rewritten their script of The Gunslinger and the search has begun for a filmmaker. As of now, it’s unclear whether Russell Crowe, who was once attached to the role of Deschain, is still involved.
“There are few projects out there that compare with the scope, vision, complex characters and fully drawn world that Stephen King has created with The Dark Tower,” said Tom Rothman, the new chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group. “I am a giant fan. And, as Stephen himself does, we love the direction that Akiva and Jeff have taken. This is a great opportunity for a director to put his or her stamp on a cool global franchise.”
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t5c-LVYnafg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
#255
re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
EXCLUSIVE: Nikolaj Arcel is the choice to direct The Dark Tower, the Stephen King novel series set in a world woven with magic and revolving around the gunslinger Roland Deschain. I’ve heard talks will begin shortly toward a deal that will have him overseeing a rewrite and directing the film. Sony Pictures Entertainment signed on earlier this year to co-finance the franchise with Media Rights Capital — it gives new topper Tom Rothman a strong franchise play — and now it looks like they’re near to naming the helmer who’ll bring this massively ambitious project to life.
Sony will distribute what is planned to be the first in a series of movies. A complementary TV series is also being developed by MRC. Producing are Weed Road’s Akiva Goldsman and Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Erica Huggins. King is also a producer. That quartet has been involved in this franchise since the beginning, and MRC kept it going when it was between studios.
Arcel co-scripted the Swedish version of the Stieg Larsson novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and then directed the well-received A Royal Affair, which featured breakout performances by Mads Mikkelsen and Alicia Vikander and was Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Film. He is separately attached to direct an adaptation of Don Winslow’s seminal bestselling novel The Power Of The Dog, and to a DreamWorks and Working Title adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier novel Rebecca.
Arcel, when he was getting going in Denmark, taught himself to speak and read English in order to consume Stephen King’s books in the writer’s native tongue. Arcel is a huge fan of The Dark Tower and knows the series well. That impressed the studio, and he showed with Dragon Tattoo that he could go dark, which is important in this series. Arcel most recently turned in a script on a Robert F. Kennedy pic that Matt Damon will star in for Warner Bros.
The Dark Tower has been through many twists and turns — it first surfaced at Universal and then Warner Bros — but they’ve got a lean mean script that is primarily based on the first book in the series, The Gunslinger, establishing the relationship between Roland and young protege Jake Chambers. The latest draft of the script is co-written by Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner, re-conceived by them from an earlier version that was pricey. Pinkner is exec producer.
Next step will be to tap a star to play the gunslinger. Numerous stars have flirted with that role, including Javier Bardem and Russell Crowe. It will be nice to see King — who options his works for $1 with short leashes, but a long one here — finally get a movie on what is his answer to Tolkien’s Middle Earth novels.
Arcel is repped by United Agents and WME.
Sony will distribute what is planned to be the first in a series of movies. A complementary TV series is also being developed by MRC. Producing are Weed Road’s Akiva Goldsman and Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Erica Huggins. King is also a producer. That quartet has been involved in this franchise since the beginning, and MRC kept it going when it was between studios.
Arcel co-scripted the Swedish version of the Stieg Larsson novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and then directed the well-received A Royal Affair, which featured breakout performances by Mads Mikkelsen and Alicia Vikander and was Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Film. He is separately attached to direct an adaptation of Don Winslow’s seminal bestselling novel The Power Of The Dog, and to a DreamWorks and Working Title adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier novel Rebecca.
Arcel, when he was getting going in Denmark, taught himself to speak and read English in order to consume Stephen King’s books in the writer’s native tongue. Arcel is a huge fan of The Dark Tower and knows the series well. That impressed the studio, and he showed with Dragon Tattoo that he could go dark, which is important in this series. Arcel most recently turned in a script on a Robert F. Kennedy pic that Matt Damon will star in for Warner Bros.
The Dark Tower has been through many twists and turns — it first surfaced at Universal and then Warner Bros — but they’ve got a lean mean script that is primarily based on the first book in the series, The Gunslinger, establishing the relationship between Roland and young protege Jake Chambers. The latest draft of the script is co-written by Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner, re-conceived by them from an earlier version that was pricey. Pinkner is exec producer.
Next step will be to tap a star to play the gunslinger. Numerous stars have flirted with that role, including Javier Bardem and Russell Crowe. It will be nice to see King — who options his works for $1 with short leashes, but a long one here — finally get a movie on what is his answer to Tolkien’s Middle Earth novels.
Arcel is repped by United Agents and WME.
#256
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
The first installment in the adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Dark Tower” franchise will bow on Jan 13, 2017. Nikolaj Arcel is directing.
#257
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
I wonder if Arcel directing increases the chance of my preferred Roland, Mads Mikkelsen, actually getting a shot at it.
He's probably a bigger star than he was when this first started getting talked about, and he's not committed to Hannibal any longer.
He's probably a bigger star than he was when this first started getting talked about, and he's not committed to Hannibal any longer.
#258
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Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
Matthew McConaughey Offered Villain Role in Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’
November 16, 2015 | 03:15PM PT
Justin Kroll
Film Reporter @krolljvar
Matthew McConaughey has set his sights on an iconic Stephen King villain.
Sources tell Variety that Sony wants McConaughey to play Walter Padick — aka the Man in Black — in Sony and MRC’s adaptation of King’s “The Dark Tower” franchise. McConaughey has just received the script and has not yet decided whether he will star.
Sony and MRC declined to comment.
Padick is a demonic sorcerer who Roland “the gunslinger” pursues in the first book. The character first appears in “The Stand” and goes by the name of Randall Flagg, a character that McConaughey was also offered to play. “The Gunslinger” will be the first in a series of films.
Nikolaj Arcel is directing the movie, which is currently set to bow on Jan. 13, 2017.
The first book, “The Gunslinger,” has already been adapted by Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner. Goldsman and Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Erica Huggins will produce, while Pinkner will exec produce.
Sony will distribute the pic. MRC will also develop a TV series to go along with the film franchise.
McConaughey recently finished filming the Stephen Gaghan drama “Gold” and also has “Sea of Trees” set to bow later this year. He is repped by CAA.
November 16, 2015 | 03:15PM PT
Justin Kroll
Film Reporter @krolljvar
Matthew McConaughey has set his sights on an iconic Stephen King villain.
Sources tell Variety that Sony wants McConaughey to play Walter Padick — aka the Man in Black — in Sony and MRC’s adaptation of King’s “The Dark Tower” franchise. McConaughey has just received the script and has not yet decided whether he will star.
Sony and MRC declined to comment.
Padick is a demonic sorcerer who Roland “the gunslinger” pursues in the first book. The character first appears in “The Stand” and goes by the name of Randall Flagg, a character that McConaughey was also offered to play. “The Gunslinger” will be the first in a series of films.
Nikolaj Arcel is directing the movie, which is currently set to bow on Jan. 13, 2017.
The first book, “The Gunslinger,” has already been adapted by Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner. Goldsman and Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Erica Huggins will produce, while Pinkner will exec produce.
Sony will distribute the pic. MRC will also develop a TV series to go along with the film franchise.
McConaughey recently finished filming the Stephen Gaghan drama “Gold” and also has “Sea of Trees” set to bow later this year. He is repped by CAA.
#259
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
Idris Elba Poised to Star Opposite Matthew McConaughey in Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’
http://www.thewrap.com/idris-elba-po...he-dark-tower/
http://www.thewrap.com/idris-elba-po...he-dark-tower/
#260
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Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
Interesting. It would make the Gunslinger's resemblance to a real world figure as mentioned in a later book a lot harder to buy, but I would be fine if that subplot was dropped.
#261
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
#262
DVD Talk Limited Edition
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
If Roland is now black then they would need to find a different reason for Detta Walker to mistrust him.
#263
DVD Talk Hero
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
Matthew McConaughey would seem to be a pretty spot-on casting choice for Roland, and Elba wouldn't be a bad choice for Flagg or the Man in Black.
#264
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - The Film - New, Rumors, etc.
The tower has begun to peek above the horizon.
After many years, and many attempts, a film version of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is finally getting underway with Idris Elba confirmed as the gunslinger and Matthew McConaughey as the mystical foe known as the man in black.
Both the author and the movie’s director and co-writer, Nikolaj Arcel, spoke exclusively with EW about the plan to begin adapting the six-shooter-and-sorcery tale — which spans eight novels, assorted comic books and short stories, and is frequently referenced throughout King’s body of work.
“The thing is, it’s been a looong trip from the books to the film,” King says, putting it right in context: “When you think about it, I started these stories as a senior in college, sitting in a little sh-tty cabin beside the river in Maine, and finally this thing is actually in pre-production now.” He laughs. “I’m delighted, and I’m a little bit surprised.”
Arcel, who is best known for the 2012 Danish film A Royal Affair and for co-writing the Swedish version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, says he will start shooting The Dark Tower in South Africa in seven weeks, and Sony Pictures plans to have it in theaters on Jan. 13, 2017.
Arcel will share screenwriting credit with Anders Thomas Jensen, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner. The producers will be Goldman and his Weed Road company; Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Erica Huggins of Imagine Entertainment; and Pinkner as executive producer.
“What Stephen King does best is mixing the everyday, or what you might call the mundane, with the fantastical,” says Arcel. “In my view, [The Dark Tower] novels are a mix between sci-fi and fantasy and modern times. That exact mix is so Stephen King.”
King says the movie will open with the first line from the first book. “It should start that way,” he says. “I’ve been pretty insistent about that.” He even tweeted it out today:
It’s official: The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed. #DarkTowerMovie @McConaughey @Idris Elba.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 1, 2016
It’s easy to imagine that phrase being The Dark Tower’s version of “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …,” serving to introduce almost any part of the saga. But this first film will not adapt the plot of the first book, The Gunslinger, published in 1982.
“[The movie] starts in media res, in the middle of the story instead of at the beginning, which may upset some of the fans a little bit, but they’ll get behind it, because it is the story,” King says.
Arcel declined to specify which books his movie focus on, but he did offer this clue: “A lot of it takes place in our day, in the modern world.”
THE PATH OF THE BEAM
For those who haven’t turned the pages of The Dark Tower books, they tell the story of the fallen land of Mid-World through the eyes of Roland Deschain, a sort of frontiersman knight whose primary weapon is not a sword but a pair of revolvers. He’s on a quest to save his decaying world by reaching the tower that stands at the nexus point in time and space.
The man in black – a devil who goes by many names, but mostly Walter Padick or Walter O’Dim – is an ageless deceiver and sorcerer who also seeks to reach the tower and rule over its seemingly infinite kingdoms.
To complete his journey, Roland must call on help from our world, drawing a junkie named Eddie, an amputee named Susannah, and a young boy named Jake into his realm to be part of his ka-tet – the term for a group brought together by destiny. Their yellow brick road is one of the six invisible beams that hold Roland’s world together – and lead directly to the tower itself.
Although Arcel and King aren’t ready to reveal which books the movie may cover, we can use their clues to do a little soothsaying: Since the fourth novel in the eight-book series, 1997’s Wizard and Glass, is almost entirely a flashback about Roland’s youth and lost love, it’s a good guess that the movies may start with 1993’s The Waste Lands, the third book in the series, which is where much of King’s broader tower mythology began to coalesce. Its story involves the ka-tet’s efforts to connect with Jake, who lives in a far-off “where” (New York City) and a different “when” (1977 in the novel – although that could easily be changed to now.) But that’s just speculation.
As for additional casting, Mad Max: Fury Road actress Abbey Lee is reportedly in talks for the role of Tirana, but it’s not clear yet who will play the other main characters. More announcements are expected in the weeks ahead.
For now, Arcel is starting by introducing his hero and villain. Although it may be a surprise to some, who are used to picturing Roland as the blue-eyed white man depicted in the book’s illustrations, he says it was “a no-brainer” to cast Elba as the gunslinger. King agrees.
THE GUNSLINGER
“For me, it just clicked. He’s such a formidable man,” says Arcel, who says he’s been a fan of Elba’s since The Wire. “I had to go to Idris and tell him my vision for the entire journey with Roland and the ka-tet. We discussed, who is this character? What’s he about? What’s his quest? What’s his psychology? We tried to figure out if we saw the same guy. And we absolutely had all the same ideas and thoughts. He had a unique vision for who Roland would be.”
King is a fan of the choice, and says he’s looking forward to seeing Elba bring Roland to life. “I love it. I think he’s a terrific actor, one of the best working in the business now,” the author says. But he admits he had a different actor in mind when he started writing the books 46 years ago – almost three years before Elba was even born.
“I visualized [Clint] Eastwood as Roland,” King says. “I loved the Spaghetti Westerns and all those widescreen close-ups of his face, especially the ones where he’d been left out in the desert and was all covered with blisters and sunburn. I thought, ‘That’s my Roland.’”
Ol’ Clint was more of an inspiration point, however. “As the years went by, [the character] became a more particular individual in my own mind,” King says. “He wasn’t Eastwood anymore. He was just … Roland.”
The author, who raves about Elba’s recent work in the child-soldier drama Beasts of No Nation, says he hopes fans of the books have no problem accepting a man of color as Roland. “For me the character is still the character. It’s almost a Sergio Leone character, like ‘the man with no name,’” King says. “He can be white or black, it makes no difference to me. I think it opens all kind of exciting possibilities for the backstory.”
Arcel acknowledges that skin color actually was an important factor in the relationship between Roland and Susannah, the black amputee he drew into his world from her life in 1964. In the books, she is not thrilled to find herself yanked into another dimension by a grizzled white guy. “Some fans are asking, understandably, ‘What about the racial tension?’” Arcel says. “But as the story progresses that will be made clear, how we’ll deal with all those things.”
THE MAN IN BLACK
This is an especially tricky character, in more ways than one. In The Gunslinger, he was like the shark in Jaws — mostly unseen, although his menace permeated the story. He’s a big part of Roland’s past, and weaves into the story as the novels continue. The movie will draw him further out of the shadows.
Even King says he never had a clear image of the man in black’s face, maybe because it kept changing. “I never really thought of him,” the author says. “But [in the movie] he becomes a character who isn’t just a mirage that Roland is chasing. The way things are set up, he’s right there.”
That shapeshifting quality is what drew Arcel to the Dallas Buyers Club Oscar-winner. “Matthew is an incredible actor who can do anything. That’s how I feel about Walter Padick. He could do anything,” the director says.
Those who know King’s other work will recognize the man in black as the same villain from both The Stand and the fantasy The Eyes of the Dragon. “He is this timeless sorcerer, and being a Stephen King fan, I’ve read and experienced Walter in various iterations,” Arcel says. “He has a very interesting way of seeing the world. He sees it with a sort of delight, even though he is obviously on the wrong side of the light-and-dark spectrum. He’s someone I’ve been having a lot of fun with.”
OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
Fans who may be rejoicing that the story is finally headed to the screen have had their hosannas stifled before, but this time the movie is definitely happening.
For decades, The Dark Tower has defied adaptation – first by being incomplete, as King’s novels were spread out over decades, and then simply by being such a vast, genre-bending story. In 2010 director Ron Howard began trying to assemble a multi-platform approach to filming it, with Javier Bardem in the lead role of Roland. Howard’s innovative plan was to have a trio of movies that would follow the gunslinger’s quest to reach the tower, which would be accompanied by a cable TV series that could serve as a kind of prequel, filling in backstory.
“There were a lot of people who had trouble with that concept at first,” King says. “It’s tough to get show-people to actually try something new, which is one of the reasons they’re so bent out of shape about Netflix, and Beasts of No Nation. But little by little, people started to get on board with the idea.”
Akiva Goldsman, who won the adapted screenplay Oscar for writing A Beautiful Mind, began work on the scripts, and he and Howard even visited King to help break down which parts of the story they should tell onscreen.
“Ron has been a huge supporter of this project from the very beginning. I think the reason was his wife was crazy about the books,” King says. “He came up to Maine, and we talked about it for a long time in the backyard. We were actually playing catch. We had baseball gloves, and were saying, ‘We could do this with it… We could do that with it …’”
That was the first time anybody suggested to King that maybe there could be a collection of movies and also a TV series telling the same story from different directions.
Universal Pictures was set to launch this ambitious project, the Warner Bros. explored the possibility, but cold feet and money got in the way, King says.
Goldsman’s script became the foundation for the new film, and King says a successful movie could revive Howard’s broader plan. That’s one reason for saving the earlier part of the narrative, depicting Roland’s younger days. “They’re still holding on to this idea that they can do a TV series, and they’ve got it pegged for that,” King says.
If they end up moving forward in the timeline, there’s another challenge the filmmakers will one day have to face: A younger version of King himself turns up as a character in The Dark Tower saga.
Although this is not a part of the first film, Arcel says he would want the author to eventually play himself. But King says no way: “I’m too old.”
For now, The Dark Tower is one movie, with only the possibility of more.
“Other people have tried fantasy spectacle. Sometimes it works, sometimes it works really well when it’s based on a series of books, like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter, and sometimes it doesn’t,” King says. “What I have to go back to is this: We have Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, two great actors. You’ve got a great production team and Akiva Goldsman as the primary script writer. The team is in place, so we’ll hope for the best.”
That’s called putting your faith in the ka-tet.
After many years, and many attempts, a film version of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is finally getting underway with Idris Elba confirmed as the gunslinger and Matthew McConaughey as the mystical foe known as the man in black.
Both the author and the movie’s director and co-writer, Nikolaj Arcel, spoke exclusively with EW about the plan to begin adapting the six-shooter-and-sorcery tale — which spans eight novels, assorted comic books and short stories, and is frequently referenced throughout King’s body of work.
“The thing is, it’s been a looong trip from the books to the film,” King says, putting it right in context: “When you think about it, I started these stories as a senior in college, sitting in a little sh-tty cabin beside the river in Maine, and finally this thing is actually in pre-production now.” He laughs. “I’m delighted, and I’m a little bit surprised.”
Arcel, who is best known for the 2012 Danish film A Royal Affair and for co-writing the Swedish version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, says he will start shooting The Dark Tower in South Africa in seven weeks, and Sony Pictures plans to have it in theaters on Jan. 13, 2017.
Arcel will share screenwriting credit with Anders Thomas Jensen, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner. The producers will be Goldman and his Weed Road company; Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Erica Huggins of Imagine Entertainment; and Pinkner as executive producer.
“What Stephen King does best is mixing the everyday, or what you might call the mundane, with the fantastical,” says Arcel. “In my view, [The Dark Tower] novels are a mix between sci-fi and fantasy and modern times. That exact mix is so Stephen King.”
King says the movie will open with the first line from the first book. “It should start that way,” he says. “I’ve been pretty insistent about that.” He even tweeted it out today:
It’s official: The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed. #DarkTowerMovie @McConaughey @Idris Elba.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 1, 2016
It’s easy to imagine that phrase being The Dark Tower’s version of “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …,” serving to introduce almost any part of the saga. But this first film will not adapt the plot of the first book, The Gunslinger, published in 1982.
“[The movie] starts in media res, in the middle of the story instead of at the beginning, which may upset some of the fans a little bit, but they’ll get behind it, because it is the story,” King says.
Arcel declined to specify which books his movie focus on, but he did offer this clue: “A lot of it takes place in our day, in the modern world.”
THE PATH OF THE BEAM
For those who haven’t turned the pages of The Dark Tower books, they tell the story of the fallen land of Mid-World through the eyes of Roland Deschain, a sort of frontiersman knight whose primary weapon is not a sword but a pair of revolvers. He’s on a quest to save his decaying world by reaching the tower that stands at the nexus point in time and space.
The man in black – a devil who goes by many names, but mostly Walter Padick or Walter O’Dim – is an ageless deceiver and sorcerer who also seeks to reach the tower and rule over its seemingly infinite kingdoms.
To complete his journey, Roland must call on help from our world, drawing a junkie named Eddie, an amputee named Susannah, and a young boy named Jake into his realm to be part of his ka-tet – the term for a group brought together by destiny. Their yellow brick road is one of the six invisible beams that hold Roland’s world together – and lead directly to the tower itself.
Although Arcel and King aren’t ready to reveal which books the movie may cover, we can use their clues to do a little soothsaying: Since the fourth novel in the eight-book series, 1997’s Wizard and Glass, is almost entirely a flashback about Roland’s youth and lost love, it’s a good guess that the movies may start with 1993’s The Waste Lands, the third book in the series, which is where much of King’s broader tower mythology began to coalesce. Its story involves the ka-tet’s efforts to connect with Jake, who lives in a far-off “where” (New York City) and a different “when” (1977 in the novel – although that could easily be changed to now.) But that’s just speculation.
As for additional casting, Mad Max: Fury Road actress Abbey Lee is reportedly in talks for the role of Tirana, but it’s not clear yet who will play the other main characters. More announcements are expected in the weeks ahead.
For now, Arcel is starting by introducing his hero and villain. Although it may be a surprise to some, who are used to picturing Roland as the blue-eyed white man depicted in the book’s illustrations, he says it was “a no-brainer” to cast Elba as the gunslinger. King agrees.
THE GUNSLINGER
“For me, it just clicked. He’s such a formidable man,” says Arcel, who says he’s been a fan of Elba’s since The Wire. “I had to go to Idris and tell him my vision for the entire journey with Roland and the ka-tet. We discussed, who is this character? What’s he about? What’s his quest? What’s his psychology? We tried to figure out if we saw the same guy. And we absolutely had all the same ideas and thoughts. He had a unique vision for who Roland would be.”
King is a fan of the choice, and says he’s looking forward to seeing Elba bring Roland to life. “I love it. I think he’s a terrific actor, one of the best working in the business now,” the author says. But he admits he had a different actor in mind when he started writing the books 46 years ago – almost three years before Elba was even born.
“I visualized [Clint] Eastwood as Roland,” King says. “I loved the Spaghetti Westerns and all those widescreen close-ups of his face, especially the ones where he’d been left out in the desert and was all covered with blisters and sunburn. I thought, ‘That’s my Roland.’”
Ol’ Clint was more of an inspiration point, however. “As the years went by, [the character] became a more particular individual in my own mind,” King says. “He wasn’t Eastwood anymore. He was just … Roland.”
The author, who raves about Elba’s recent work in the child-soldier drama Beasts of No Nation, says he hopes fans of the books have no problem accepting a man of color as Roland. “For me the character is still the character. It’s almost a Sergio Leone character, like ‘the man with no name,’” King says. “He can be white or black, it makes no difference to me. I think it opens all kind of exciting possibilities for the backstory.”
Arcel acknowledges that skin color actually was an important factor in the relationship between Roland and Susannah, the black amputee he drew into his world from her life in 1964. In the books, she is not thrilled to find herself yanked into another dimension by a grizzled white guy. “Some fans are asking, understandably, ‘What about the racial tension?’” Arcel says. “But as the story progresses that will be made clear, how we’ll deal with all those things.”
THE MAN IN BLACK
This is an especially tricky character, in more ways than one. In The Gunslinger, he was like the shark in Jaws — mostly unseen, although his menace permeated the story. He’s a big part of Roland’s past, and weaves into the story as the novels continue. The movie will draw him further out of the shadows.
Even King says he never had a clear image of the man in black’s face, maybe because it kept changing. “I never really thought of him,” the author says. “But [in the movie] he becomes a character who isn’t just a mirage that Roland is chasing. The way things are set up, he’s right there.”
That shapeshifting quality is what drew Arcel to the Dallas Buyers Club Oscar-winner. “Matthew is an incredible actor who can do anything. That’s how I feel about Walter Padick. He could do anything,” the director says.
Those who know King’s other work will recognize the man in black as the same villain from both The Stand and the fantasy The Eyes of the Dragon. “He is this timeless sorcerer, and being a Stephen King fan, I’ve read and experienced Walter in various iterations,” Arcel says. “He has a very interesting way of seeing the world. He sees it with a sort of delight, even though he is obviously on the wrong side of the light-and-dark spectrum. He’s someone I’ve been having a lot of fun with.”
OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
Fans who may be rejoicing that the story is finally headed to the screen have had their hosannas stifled before, but this time the movie is definitely happening.
For decades, The Dark Tower has defied adaptation – first by being incomplete, as King’s novels were spread out over decades, and then simply by being such a vast, genre-bending story. In 2010 director Ron Howard began trying to assemble a multi-platform approach to filming it, with Javier Bardem in the lead role of Roland. Howard’s innovative plan was to have a trio of movies that would follow the gunslinger’s quest to reach the tower, which would be accompanied by a cable TV series that could serve as a kind of prequel, filling in backstory.
“There were a lot of people who had trouble with that concept at first,” King says. “It’s tough to get show-people to actually try something new, which is one of the reasons they’re so bent out of shape about Netflix, and Beasts of No Nation. But little by little, people started to get on board with the idea.”
Akiva Goldsman, who won the adapted screenplay Oscar for writing A Beautiful Mind, began work on the scripts, and he and Howard even visited King to help break down which parts of the story they should tell onscreen.
“Ron has been a huge supporter of this project from the very beginning. I think the reason was his wife was crazy about the books,” King says. “He came up to Maine, and we talked about it for a long time in the backyard. We were actually playing catch. We had baseball gloves, and were saying, ‘We could do this with it… We could do that with it …’”
That was the first time anybody suggested to King that maybe there could be a collection of movies and also a TV series telling the same story from different directions.
Universal Pictures was set to launch this ambitious project, the Warner Bros. explored the possibility, but cold feet and money got in the way, King says.
Goldsman’s script became the foundation for the new film, and King says a successful movie could revive Howard’s broader plan. That’s one reason for saving the earlier part of the narrative, depicting Roland’s younger days. “They’re still holding on to this idea that they can do a TV series, and they’ve got it pegged for that,” King says.
If they end up moving forward in the timeline, there’s another challenge the filmmakers will one day have to face: A younger version of King himself turns up as a character in The Dark Tower saga.
Although this is not a part of the first film, Arcel says he would want the author to eventually play himself. But King says no way: “I’m too old.”
For now, The Dark Tower is one movie, with only the possibility of more.
“Other people have tried fantasy spectacle. Sometimes it works, sometimes it works really well when it’s based on a series of books, like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter, and sometimes it doesn’t,” King says. “What I have to go back to is this: We have Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, two great actors. You’ve got a great production team and Akiva Goldsman as the primary script writer. The team is in place, so we’ll hope for the best.”
That’s called putting your faith in the ka-tet.
#265
DVD Talk God
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - (2017, D: Arcel) S: Elba, McConaughey
Seems like a quick turnaround for this movie.
#266
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - (2017, D: Arcel) S: Elba, McConaughey
I'm going to guess it will get pushed from January to the late summer or fall. August and September are still pretty open.
#268
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Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - (2017, D: Arcel) S: Elba, McConaughey
Good god. Dex14. I would've liked some bolding in there but... apparently the whole damn thing is necessary information.
#269
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Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - (2017, D: Arcel) S: Elba, McConaughey
If they want someone to play a younger version of Stephen King, Joe Hill certainly has the look down. Genetics may have something to do with that.
#270
#271
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - (2017, D: Arcel) S: Elba, McConaughey
So they're starting the story half way in??? I'm not a fan of that decision.
#272
DVD Talk Hero
#274
DVD Talk Godfather
Re: Stephen King's The Dark Tower - (2017, D: Arcel) S: Elba, McConaughey
Sounds like the director is a huge fan and knows his stuff so a big there.
A single open ended film though? Kind of a bummer.
A single open ended film though? Kind of a bummer.