Is Pedro Pascal set for Roland Deschain role in MIke Flanagan’s Dark Tower series and movies?

Oh, boy, oh, boy…

So, if you’ve been a fan of my  site for a while, you’ll know that one of my favourite things ever is The Dark Tower series by Stephen King and I, like many others, have been waiting on an adaptation to him our screens ever since i started reading the series about 30 years ago and yes, I even liked some aspects of the awful movie adaptation.

A few months back we learned that Mike Flanagan – he of Midnight Mass fame and a Stephen King super fan himself who directed the Dr Sleep and Gerald’s Game and has said on several occasions that The Dark Tower is his dream project – along with Trevor Macey – they both own Intrepid Pictures – are developing the Dark Tower series and I did a little jig, I’m not going to lie.

Then a few weeks ago, Flanagan may have revealed who the lead in the series will be.

Before we discuss this, we must tell you who the lead character, Roland Deschain, the last Gunslinger, is. Roland is a Gunslinger, a type of knight/peacekeeper who has found himself tasked to find and save The Dark Tower, a mysterious structure that stands at the centre of all realities and keeps evil forces from pouring into and annihilating those worlds and the entire multiverse.

He’s unsure how he’s going to reach it, where it is or who exactly charged him with this sacred quest but he’s going to cross heaven and hell to make sure he saves all things. It’s an incredible story spread over eight books and makes Lord of the Rings look like an episode of Friends. In the original books Roland was based on Clint Eastwood, an archetypical gunslinger but that was a long time ago and the world has moved on, meaning Eastwood is not longer even a possibility for the gig should it happen – Father Callaghan though? If you know, you know.

That leads us to Flanagan’s recent meeting with The Mandalorian himself, Pedro Pascal!

Yes, the star of The Last of Us, Game of Thrones and the hit Star Wars series has now, due to the meeting, been linked to the casting of Roland and, honestly, after Mando and now his stellar performance in The Last of Us as Joel, I’m starting to think he’s a perfect choice… as if he’s been leading up to the role by his gigs over the last few years.

The Walking Dead’s Glen Mazzara discusses what his Dark Tower series would have been

Ka is a wheel, after all.

Flanagan has pitched The Dark Tower as two movies and then five seasons… and even that might not be enough to tell this story.

Now, just to be clear, neither Flanagan or Pascal have mentioned The Dark Tower in relation to this meeting… but, come on!

📸 Mike Flanagan with Pedro Pascal recently! pic.twitter.com/xdBjBelQGk

— Mike Flanagan Source (@flanagansource) January 28, 2023

In a new update, Flanagan revealed that he works on The Dark Tower every day and that, at the moment, it is not tied to Amazon or anyone else: “[My creative partner Trevor Macy and I] have The Dark Tower. We carved it out from our Netflix deal, knowing we were leaving, and we carved it out from our Amazon deal as well, knowing that they’d already tried to do [a Dark Tower adaptation] and might be reluctant to do it.

“So, The Dark Tower doesn’t have a studio. We don’t have a partner on it yet, so I’m developing it myself, which is really a blast. And that’s my dream project, you know? I’ve wanted to do that for so long. If we can get it off the ground, if we can actually get it going, I’m not ruling out Amazon’s involvement down the line. Our relationship with them is brand new, so we’ll have to see. But, yeah, I work on The Dark Tower in one capacity or another every day.”

Amazon had previously tried to get a Dark Tower series off the ground and had filmed a pilot – which I’d kill to see – but alas, it wasn’t to be.

Maybe with Flanagan behind the project, someone who clearly knows and loves the source material and is an accomplished filmmaker himself, it will finally find its home. All paths follow the beam

Long days and pleasant nights, Gunslingers.