Author Stephen King has said Director Nikolaj Arcel’s first Dark Tower film won’t be entirely in sync with the seven part book series.
In a podcast with EW, King said that the film won’t be a straight adaptation of his novels, but he believes that fans will still enjoy it regardless.
“[The movie] starts sort of in medias res,” said King, “in the middle of the story instead of at the beginning, which may upset some of the fans a little bit. But they will get behind it, because it is the story.”
Arcel’s movie is the first in what will be several films based on the book series. It recently began filming with starring roles of Idris Elba playing the gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and Matthew McConaughey as the man in black, Walter Padick.
The Dark Tower adaptation has been in development hell for years since the completion of the novels in 2004. Initially, it began as a project with J.J. Abrams involvement in 2007. Then, it was supposed to involve Ron Howard and rumors also came about that Russell Crowe would supposedly play Roland. Finally, we have reached the point where an adaptation has come to light and it is already layered in controversy.
For one thing, The Dark Tower novels are very strange novels and are difficult to imagine as a movie in the first place. They are certainly some of the strangest King novels, if not the strangest ones. It mashes the genres of science fiction, high fantasy, and horror in an absolutely strange way that is quite hard to translate to film. It’s hard enough to understand in the written word and you sort of have to just let the book unfold.
The other controversy is the casting of Idris Elba. Nobody seems to have doubts that Idris Elba is a great actor, but people have problems with the casting due to the fact that Odetta Holmes, a schizophrenic and main character, makes fun of Roland and Eddie, a heroin addict and another main character, for being white. More than likely, they’ll probably just remove that plot point from the movie, which isn’t entirely problematic as it plays a role, but more of a minor one.
What do you think of the Dark Tower film adaptation? Do you think it will actually work? Let us know in the comments below!
