You can be sure there will either be a book or documentary covering the extremely long journey Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series took to get to the big screen.
Ron Howard had a very ambitious plan to turn it into a big screen and small screen mixed adaptation with Benicio del Toro as Roland Deschain aka The Gunslingers, but the studio started sticking their fingers in and messed things up.
Nikolaj Arcel was able to do the impossible, and long awaited Dark Tower will hit theaters on August 4th. The marketing machine has begun so expect an onslaught after the first big trailer hits on Wednesday. The first touch were these clever twitchy posters just below that are teasing the trailer. They feature Idris Elba as Roland Deschain, Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black and Tom Taylor as Jake Chambers.
Shortly after the posters were unleashed on Tuesday, two teasers landed. We’ve combined both into one video below for your viewing ease. As expected, they’re quick and to the point. One shows the Man in Black exactly as you expect; being callous and foreboding as McConaughey has done so well in films like Frailty and Killer Joe.
The second has Roland Deschain talking up his Gunslinger’s Creed while also showing off his gun play.
Then new images surfaced which are just below. The teasers give a nice look into what we can expect from Wednesday’s trailer, and many diehard fans will be holding their breath hoping this is one Stephen King adaptation that doesn’t turn to crap.
For those not familiar with this brilliant book series, here’s what to expect from The Dark Tower:
Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) is a young 11-year-old adventure seeker who discovers clues about another dimension called Mid-World. Upon following the mystery, he is spirited away to Mid-World where he encounters the lone frontiersman knight Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), who is on a quest to reach the ‘Dark Tower’ that resides in End-World and reach the nexus point between time and space that he hopes will save Mid-World from extinction. But with various monsters and a vicious sorcerer named Walter Padick (Matthew McConaughey) hot on their trail, the unlikely duo find that their quest may be difficult to complete.
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, we easily could be seeing the start of a fantastic new franchise.