In honor of Stephen King's birthday, those behind the upcoming big screen
adaptation of the author's The Dark Tower have relinquished a couple of
tantalizing details on the subject of the film's companion television series,
which will begin shooting in 2017 for a 2018 debut, preferential around the
time the film becomes available either on cable or streaming.
In The
Dark Tower, which opens in theaters on February 2017, Idris Elba plays Roland Deschain, a man on
a deadly mission to prevent Matthew McConaughey's
Man in Black from reaching the mysterious tower (the linchpin of all existence)
and become god.
The
intention behind the television series, which came packaged with the film, is
to explore the backstory of the main characters with Elba reprising his lead role
alongside Tom Taylor who plays a young psychic boy named Jake Chambers in the
film, whose powers are being targeted by McConaughey's character who wants to
use them to
bring down the ethereal beams that keep the Tower standing and maintain order
in the multiverse, including Mid-World, the film's setting.
Elba and Taylor will act as the framing
device for the series story, which takes place years before the events of the
film and will follow a young Roland through his many trials and tribulations well
before Mid-World fell into chaos. Since the Man in Black is semi-immortal and plays
a major part in Roland's upbringing, McConaughey could reprise his role
from the film, but no deals have yet been made with the actor. However, Man in Black usually takes on
different names and appearances in King's novels, so he could appear in the
show, but just with a different actor playing him.
Speaking to EW, the film's executive
producer and co-screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, and MRC, the production company
behind film and series, revealed that a small part of the TV will be based on
King's original novel The Gunslinger while the bulk of it will use the fourth
book in the author's saga Wizard and Glass.
Of The Gunslinger, the show's
creators will use the portion in which Marten Broadcloack (Man in Black), an
adviser to the King of Gilead, Roland's father, manipulates the young and brash
prince into taking his gunslinger trials in order to destroy him.
As for Wizard and Glass, since it was
an essentially a prequel in which Roland recounts stories of his past to his
allies, it will be used as the framing device for the show.
In Wizard and Glass, "as
Roland the Gunslinger, Eddie, Susannah, and Jake survive Blaine the Mono’s
final crash, only to find themselves stranded in an alternate version of
Topeka, Kansas, that has been ravaged by the superflu virus. While following
the deserted I-70 toward a distant glass palace, Roland recounts his tragic
story about a seaside town called Hambry, where he fell in love with a girl
named Susan Delgado, and where he and his old tet-mates Alain and Cuthbert battled the forces of John Farson,
the harrier who—with a little help from a seeing sphere called Maerlyn’s
Grapefruit—ignited Mid-World’s final war." - Amazon
"In the movie,
Roland is suffering tremendous loss. The most concrete, personal, existential
heartbreak a character can have," Goldsman says. "If the movie
chronicles his final reach toward hope again, the TV show is the loss of that
hope."
Besides Roland and Jake, no other roles
have yet been.
Source - EW
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