For the longest time we’ve been promised an adaptation of Stephen King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower series… and now it looks like it may actually happen.
As we reported a while ago, it looks like Idris Elba is now all but confirmed as the lead in the series which will be a combination of movies and TV seasons as the last Gunslinger, Roland Deschain, the man on the quest to the Dark Tower, a place of such awesome power that it holds the entirety of reality on its supports, because everything is starting to come apart and only he can keep it together.
The Dark Tower is arguably one of the biggest adventures ever committed to paper, such is its scale.
Now producer, Akiva Goldsman has become very focal about their support at the casting of Elba, which we have to believe he wouldn’t do if it wasn’t close to happening. Goldsman said: “I think Idris Elba is the greatest possible idea for casting for Roland, and I’m unbelievably proud of it as a collaborator on this enterprise and because I think that he’s a great actor and I couldn’t be more thrilled that he is likely to play a part. I understand that people who are thoughtful about the storytelling and the racial politics of the storytelling might want to understand how that informs that storytelling, and I respect that and I hear that, and those things are not things we didn’t think about or don’t think about.”
He insists that the casting choice – Roland in the books is based on Clint Eastwood, King was quite clear on this – will not “necessarily defile the source material”. Um, well, that’s good… we guess.
Stephen King himself commented back in December on the rumour of Elba, saying: “To me, the color of the gunslinger doesn’t matter. What I care about is how fast he can draw…and that he takes care of the ka-tet.”
The Ka-tet is Roland’s group of Gunslingers who join him on the path to the Tower.
Director Nikolaj Arcel, who co-wrote the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and directed A Royal Affair will direct the first movie while Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner are writing the screenplay which covers the first of eight books in King’s series. A TV series is in development to run alongside the movie(s).
The Dark Tower is currently set for release on January 13, 2017.
Source: TheLawyerHerald
Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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