Since it's inception with The Gunslinger back in 1982, Stephen King's The Dark Tower series has always had Hollywood keeping a keen eye on it's potential big screen adaptation.
Seven additional books later, and it looks like it's finally about to become a reality, but not after traversing a hugely difficult path along the way.
Back in 2007, J.J. Abrams was working on TV series adaptation as a follow up to his hit series Lost. Then in 2010, Universal announced that Ron Howard would take on the project, directing a trilogy of movies, with an interconnecting TV series linking them in between cinema release dates, with Javier Bardem and Viggo Mortensen lined up for the leading roles of good-guy Roland Deschain and mysterious villain Walter Padick, respectively.
In June of last year, it was being reported that Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) had been offered the director's chair, and today, Stephen King confirmed that the two leading roles will go to Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey.
It's official: The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed. #DarkTowerMovie @McConaughey @IdrisElba
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 1, 2016
King spoke to EW about the adaptation today, stating that the first movie will not necessarily follow the chronology of the novels, while director Arcel stated that most of the story will take place "in the modern day".
The movie is already penciled in for a January 13th 2017 release date, so expect more news on this - as well as our first official images - sooner rather than later.
