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THE DARK TOWER (2017): Stephen King & Nikolaj Arcel Discuss The Film’s Direction

Gunslinger Crow The Dark Tower

Stephen King and Nikolaj Arcel talk The Dark Tower’s Production. Author Stephen King and The Dark Tower director Nikolaj Arcel recently sat down to discuss the upcoming adaptation of the Stephen King book anthology The Dark Tower. Idris Elba was recently cast as Roland Deschain, a gunslinger, and Matthew McConaughey was cast as the Man in Black.

Stephen King told fans of the book series that the first line from The Dark Tower will be the first line in the film: “The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.”

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The Dark Tower incorporates numerous genres, including Westerns, science fantasy, dark fantasy, and horror. The main character in this story is Roland Deschain, “the last living member of a knightly order known as gunslingers and the last of the line of “Arthur Eld”, his world’s analogue of King Arthur.” Deschain has been chasing his adversary, the aforementioned man in black, over the course of many years. The search, through the course of the film, leads him into a desert and into other areas of his world.

Stephen King said in the recent Entertainment Weekly interview that:

[The film adaptation of The Dark Tower] 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.

Alluding to the fact that film will reflect some Earth-centered plot points and issues from The Drawing of the Three and The Wastelands, director Arel followed up King’s statement to the interviewer with:

A lot of it takes place in our day, in the modern world.

The early vision for The Dark Towers project involved the co-mingling of films and TV series in one joint universe. That original idea has not been completely abandon. Roland Deschain’s younger incarnation, shown in Wizards and Glass, will not be featured in flashbacks, but rather is being saved for a potential TV series (most-likely resting upon the issue of The Dark Towers success at the box office).

Leave your thoughts on what Stephen King and Nikolaj Arcel had to say about The Dark Tower below in the comments section.  For more breaking movie news, please visit our Movie News Page, our Movie News Twitter Page, our Movie News Facebook Page, our Movie News Google+ Page, and consider subscribing to us by Email, “following” us on Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, or “liking” us on Facebook for quick updates. The Dark Tower will be released in U.S. theaters on January 13, 2017.

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Rollo Tomasi

Rollo Tomasi is a Connecticut-based film critic, TV show critic, news, and editorial writer. He will have a MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University in 2025. Rollo has written over 700 film, TV show, short film, Blu-ray, and 4K-Ultra reviews. His reviews are published in IMDb's External Reviews and in Google News. Previously you could find his work at Empire Movies, Blogcritics, and AltFilmGuide. Now you can find his work at FilmBook.
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