You may have picked up on our recent dismay at the short running time of The Dark Tower which opens next month.
The movie, based on Stephen King’s greatest word, the eight book series The Dark Tower, the run time of just over and hour and a half is slightly alarming.
However, director Nikolaj Arcel is keen to point out that, as the first installment in the (hopeful) movie series, this is really just an introduction to that world:
There’s one thing you learn very quickly about The Dark Tower director Nikolaj Arcel — the man is a dedicated fan of Stephen King‘s epic fantasy/horror/science fiction series.
We spoke during the San Diego Comic-Con in a Gaslamp District bar remade for promotional purposes into the Dixie Pig, a restaurant from King’s novels (and the upcoming film adaptation) that caters to a not-quite-human clientele and serves as a gateway between worlds. And while the bulk of our conversation was dedicated to all things Dark Tower and how he tackled this long-gestating adaptation, I had to ask him the question of the moment. Why is The Dark Tower, an adaptation of a sprawling saga that spans seven thick novels, only 95 minutes long?
And Arcel had an answer: “The good news here…the reason why many fans are worried about the run time is that they think we are trying to do everything in this film.
“Which we are not.
“This is ideally the first film. This is an introduction to the world and the characters. It’s not meant to be all the novels and we’re just trying to cram everything in there. So that’s one thing. And the script was really lean and tight. When I got on board, the script was very short, very lean. That’s one of the things that attracted me to it. I said “This is smart.” You start with a lean, mean story and you don’t try to cram everything in there. You just build the basic ideas. And if people enjoy it and if they like this world and these characters, we can start expanding.
We really hope he’s right but we can see a lot of content from at least four of the novels in the so far released footage, and that’s a lot to cover.
We’ll try to remain optimistic…
Thoughts?
The Dark Tower opens on August 4th US and August 10th UK, 2017.
Source: Slashfilm
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….
Nerd Comments