And so The Dark Tower adaptation saga continues…
It’s been in the works for a few years now but it appears we’re taking a big step closer to an adaptation of Stephen King’s magnum opus The Dark Tower finally becoming a reality.
Deadline reports that co-financers Sony Pictures and Media Rights Capital have chosen Danish filmmaker Nikolaj Arcel to direct the ambitious project, as well as overseeing a rewrite on the existing script. Arcel has received critical acclaim throughout his career, including for his script for the original Swedish-language The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, featuring future Hollywood star Noomi Rapace, and for writing and directing A Royal Affair, the film that first brought the now ubiquitous Alicia Vikander to people’s attention. He most recently wrote a well-received script for a Robert F. Kennedy biopic which has Matt Damon attached to star.
He’s also a huge King fan, having apparently taught himself English so that he could proverbially consume every bit of King material that he could. This, plus his track-record of producing dark material with Dragon Tattoo, has seen him shooting straight to the top of the studios’ wishlist.
Way back when this whole adaptation got going, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Akiva Goldsman and King himself were planning an unprecedented format of one movie followed by a season of a companion TV series then another movie then another season and finally a third movie to cap things off.
It appears like that idea is still alive in some form, although it may still be too much to hope that audiences will keep up in order with watching the movies and corresponding TV seasons. It’ll probably be the movies as a main event and you can tune into the TV series if you want ala the relationship between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The most recent draft of the script has been written by Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner (the latter recently joined the Transformers Writers Room) and is said to focus mainly on the first of The Dark Tower books entitled The Gunslinger, and examines the relationship between The Man With No Name-esque Roland Deschain and his young protege Jake Chambers.
So who will play the all-important lead role of Roland? That will undoubdetly be next on the studios’ to-do list. Names like Javier Bardem, Russell Crowe, Viggo Mortensen and Josh Brolin have been thrown around but of course that’s all just conjecture and wishful thinking at this early point. I’d like to throw Timothy Olyphant’s name in the ring, but that may just be the Justified fan in me speaking.
Above all else it’s about getting the feel and tone of King’s post-apocalyptic world just right. It’s a tough ask but it appears that things are heading the right direction, at least.
Source: Deadline