After spending years developing the project, producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are now less than half a year away from realising their dream of bringing Stephen King’s The Dark Tower to the big screen. However, as we’ve seen and heard, director Nikolaj Arcel’s film is not going to be a direct adaptation of King’s fantasy epic, but rather a sequel of sorts, and Howard has been speaking to Deadline about how they have went about crafting their take on the source material.
“We started talking about what it could be,” states Howard. “I read all the novels and we broke them down. He [Akiva Goldsman] presented this idea to Stephen King, and this is insider material you might not get, but it was about introducing the Horn of Eld into the very first story. He knew it would allow us to use elements of the novels in a new combination that would give us the latitude to be true to the essence of the novels, but also re-balance and refocus the narrative in a cinematic way. That was the jumping off point that began this process. When MRC [Media Rights Capital] and Modi Wiczyk became involved, that discussion deepened and we focused more on the Jake Chambers-Roland relationship at the very center of the first movie as a way of launching the universe. We simplified the story line, made it less expensive as a result, but we still utilized a lot of those important structural adjustments that Akiva and I had devised going back years ago.”
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“One of the things we did was put together a team of Dark Tower researchers, devotees of the books,” he continues. “We wanted to restructure the novels to be most cinematic and Stephen King agreed completely and understood the journey we were on immediately and supported it. We used this group to inspire our thinking and stay in the universe of Dark Tower. Goldsman and our Erica Huggins never gave up on it, and Stephen King was just so patient. We kept trying drafts, searching for collaborators. We finally got there with MRC’s Modi and Tom Rothman at Sony. Modi really got these books, and he characterizes himself as a Tower Head. Nik Arcel did a great job directing. We were very excited on that first day and we are very pleased with what we’re seeing. We’ve believed in this for so long.”
The Dark Tower is being directed by Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) and stars Idris Elba (Luther) as Roland Deschain, Matthew McConaughey (Interstellar) as the Man in Black, Tom Taylor (Doctor Foster) as Jake Chambers, Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road) as Tirana, Fran Kranz (The Cabin in the Woods) as Pimli, Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen) as Richard Sayre, Michael Barbieri (Little Men) as Timmy, Claudia Kim (Avengers: Age of Ultron) as Arra Champignon and Katheryn Winnick (Vikings) in an as-yet-unrevealed role. It is set for release on February 17th 2017.
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