Sony Delays Stephen King’s ‘The Dark Tower’ to Summer 2017
For anyone who’s followed Stephen King’s The Dark Tower’s journey to the big screen, you know it’s been just as difficult as Roland’s. The last time it looked like a sure thing, Ron Howard was behind it with Benicio del Toro, and it seemed like a really for sure thing. Then the studio began dicking around on the budget and everything fell apart.
Thankfully, everything’s been shot already so we know something will be coming out, just later than expected.
It’s not unheard of for a studio to push back a film’s release a few months — or, sometimes, even an entire year. What’s unfortunate about doing that is it instantly makes people second guess just how much faith remains in that project. 2014’s massive flop Jupiter Ascending was pushed back almost a whole year so that special effects and other technical work could be improved. But even that large amount post production time wasn’t enough to save the project from critical and financial disaster. That said, let’s hope that a recent similar move by Sony won’t have the same outcome.
The studio is currently prepping their exciting adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower for release next year. The film was previously scheduled to hit theaters in February 2017, but Sony has suddenly felt the need to push it back a few months. According to EW, Sony is now hoping to release The Dark Tower on July 28th, 2017. Being one of the most anticipated movies of next year, the unexpected delay should come as pretty disheartening news to fans. It is reassuring that Sony’s reasoning behind for the delay is quite simple: The Dark Tower has a modest budget of $60 million, and it would cost a lot more money to speed up the editing and special effects work just to have it ready for a February release. Unlike other films that have had similar delays, Sony’s decision for The Dark Tower seems more proactive than anything else. Let’s just hope it pays off.
Ron Howard’s version which would split between big screen and small screen was about double this one.
Another understandable reason for the push back is that principal photography on The Dark Tower only finished back in July, therefore, a rushed post-production process seemed unavoidable. There was also an incomplete trailer for The Dark Tower leaked during EW’s Popfest back in October, which only reinforced the theory that Sony was not at all close to finishing. But even with all of those potential hindrances, The Dark Tower still looks incredible.
If you haven’t had a chance yet to read the riveting novel (or its seven sequels), The Dark Tower follows the many journeys of a mysterious man who is simply known as The Gunslinger (Idris Elba). But amid the already dangerous post-apocalyptic wasteland that he is forced to navigate through, while also pursuing The Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey). It’s a very basic yet incredibly compelling tale of survival, which will hopefully be brought to life by director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair). If you are unfamiliar with the director’s past work, you would be doing yourself a favor by checking them out.
One of the most exciting details that we know about The Dark Tower is that Sony is apparently planning to do an entire series based on King’s acclaimed series. Even though Arcel revealed that the first film will be drawing from multiple installments, there will still be plenty more of the source material to make sequels. And the incredible amount of backstory and mythology that The Dark Tower series has makes it ideal for an epic Hollywood adaptation. So, if all goes well next year, we easily could be seeing the start of a fantastic new franchise.
We will keep you updated on The Dark Tower as the project develops.