Stephen King finally confirmed this morning that The Dark Tower film adaptation will star Idris Elba and Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey. King and director Nikolaj Arcel also outlined their vision for the project.
A film version of The Dark Tower has been in the works for years, but this is the closest it has come to fruition. It is in the works at Sony with Media Rights Capital co-producing. In addition to the movies, there are plans for a companion TV series. McConaughey had been linked to the film since November 2015 and is set to play The Man In Black. Elba was reportedly cast in December to play The Gunslinger. MAd Max: Fury Road’s Abbey Lee has also been cast.
King finally confirmed the casting on Twitter and he sat down for an interview with Entertainment Weekly, along with Arcel.
“What Stephen King does best is mixing the everyday, or what you might call the mundane, with the fantastical,” Arcel, who is also a co-writer on the script, told EW. “In my view, [The Dark Tower] novels are a mix between sci-fi and fantasy and modern times. That exact mix is so Stephen King.”
While the film will start with the same opening line as the first book, it will not be directly adapted from 1982’s The Gunslinger.
“[The movie] starts in media res, in the middle of the story instead of at the beginning, which may upset some of the fans a little bit, but they’ll get behind it, because it is the story,” King told EW.
Sony hopes to have the first Dark Tower movie in theaters on Jan. 13, 2017.