Stephen King's The Dark Tower

Lu Tze wrote: »

It was wirtten very early in his career, so you will be happy to know that stylistically its very different from the other books. Or maybe its just that he had other characters to interact with throughout the other books!

Matthew McConaughey has set his sights on an iconic Stephen King villain.

Sources tell Variety that Sony wants McConaughey to play Walter Padick — aka the Man in Black — in Sony and MRC’s adaptation of King’s “The Dark Tower” franchise. McConaughey has just received the script and has not yet decided whether he will star.

Sony and MRC declined to comment.

Padick is a demonic sorcerer who Roland “the gunslinger” pursues in the first book. The character first appears in “The Stand” and goes by the name of Randall Flagg, a character that McConaughey was also offered to play. “The Gunslinger” will be the first in a series of films.

Nikolaj Arcel is directing the movie, which is currently set to bow on Jan. 13, 2017.

The first book, “The Gunslinger,” has already been adapted by Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner. Goldsman and Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Erica Huggins will produce, while Pinkner will exec produce.

Sony will distribute the pic. MRC will also develop a TV series to go along with the film franchise.

EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures and Media Rights Capital may just have found their lead gunslinger for The Dark Tower, the Stephen King novel series set in a world woven with magic and revolving around the gunslinger Roland Deschain. I’m told that Idris Elba has emerged as the front-runner to play Deschain. He would square off against Matthew McConaughey, who’s in talks to play the villainous Man in Black. Nikolaj Arcel is directing.

There is no deal yet, and nobody would comment for the story. But this would give Elba that long-awaited star vehicle that has seemed inevitable, coming after all of the speculative questions over whether the 007 franchise would install an actor of color into the iconic James Bond role after Elba was mentioned as a strong possibility to replace Daniel Craig. King wrote the Deschain character as white — at least that is how he is depicted in the book cover illustrations — but in Elba they get a top actor who has shown in the BBC series Luther and other works that he is a movie star with swagger.

He is currently in the Oscar mix for his performance in Beasts Of No Nation, the Cary Joji Fukunaga-directed first feature for Netflix. All this makes him a fresh choice to play Deschain. The recent discussions narrowed down to Elba and Javier Bardem (who circled a previous version of the project), and really, either guy brightens up what is shaping up to be a most intriguing iteration of a franchise that had many false starts at Universal and then at Warner Bros, before MRC and Imagine and Weed Road brought it to Tom Rothman at Sony Pictures.

McConaughey came into the picture recently, and the project really got a boost when they hired Arcel, the Danish helmer of the Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair and also the co-writer of the Swedish film version of the Stieg Larsson novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Arcel, who just turned in a script for a Robert F. Kennedy film that Matt Damon will star in for Warner Bros, has been working with fellow Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen on a rewrite of the script, the last draft of which was written by Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner. Jensen is a prolific writer-director who won the Oscar for his short film Election Night.

Sony will distribute what is planned to be the first in a series of Dark Tower movies. A complementary TV series is also being developed by MRC. Producing are Weed Road’s Goldsman and Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Erica Huggins. King is also a producer. That quartet has been involved in this franchise since the beginning, and MRC kept it going after Universal and then Warner Bros developed it and then dropped out. Pinkner is en exec producer.

First installment of the Dark Tower focuses on the first book in the series, The Gunslinger, establishing the relationship between Roland and young protege Jake Chambers. After a quick pass at the script, they will start casting the gunslinger — Bardem and Russell Crowe flirted with the role in past iterations — and the young protege.

Business Cat wrote: »

A young Clint for sure, around his Sergio Leone run would have been perfect.

I think having an established actor in the role may not be such a good idea though, I'd rather see an up and coming or unheard of person rather than someone like DC.

weemcd wrote: »

Very difficult. I don't know how they'd approach Detta/Odetta