Stephen King talks The Dark Tower and confirms Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey are almost cast PLUS another book COULD happen

Well, we’ve been talking, reporting and speculating on it for an age but now the creator himself, Stephen King, has talked about the upcoming adaptation of his Dark Tower series of novels into a shared movie/TV event…

With the latest rumours putting Idris Elba in the lead running for the book’s hero, Roland of Gilead AKA The Gunslinger and Matthew McConaughey set to play Randal Flagg AKA The Man in Black, King has confirmed that, yes, both actors are looking likely to sign on: “It looks to me like it’s more likely than not it’ll happen at this point, let’s put it that way,” he says.

He continues: “I think that it’s more likely than not that Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey will be in it.

“But I can’t say with any certainty. I know that they’re trying to make deals with these actors [and] with Sony, and that’s the extent of my knowledge.”

King’s core story consists of seven novels, with a eighth (side) novel – The Wind Through The Keyhole being the latest – he also wrote The Little Sisters of Eluria which was published in his Evenything’s Eventual anthology series, so the whole saga is indeed a lengthy one.

King himself teases that the story is never finished: “I’m never done with The Dark Tower,” he said.

“The thing about The Dark Tower is that those books were never edited, so I look at them as first drafts. And by the time I got to the fifth or sixth book, I’m thinking to myself, ‘This is really all one novel.’ It drives me crazy. The thing is to try to find the time to rewrite them. There’s a missing element – a big battle at a place called Jericho Hill. And that whole thing should be written; I’ve thought about it several times, and I don’t know how to get into it.”

Wait, please, could this mean King has at least one more Dark Tower story to tell?! “I think about doing it. But I’d have to go back, read all the material before I could get myself in a frame of mind to do that. So, man, I just don’t know. I’m a pretty instinctual writer, and I don’t have any game plan. I’m very unprofessional about that part of it; I can strap myself down in a chair and write every day, but the ideas come when they come. I mean with 11/22/63, I originally had the idea in 1971, and it finally became time to write that. Maybe it will come time to write the Jericho Hill thing one day too.”

Personally speaking, Stephen King’s work – especially The Dark tower – shaped who I am and the very idea of his writing the Battle of Jericho Hill? Well, that would be a whole lot of Christmases at once.
Source: Rolling Stone