If everything goes to plan Stephen King’s Dark Tower adaptations will be a long running movie and TV franchise and it all officially kicks off with this image (and a cover) of Idris Elba as the gunslinger Roland and a few details from EW.
As far as the image goes it’s pretty stock, though fans with a better memory of the books may be able to pick out some things from the background that I can’t remember. Then again if the EW article is to be believed we might not be seeing the same story that we saw in the book. The article says that, much like Hollywood’s superhero movies, the movie “will remix the novels much the way superhero movies often draw from decades of comics mythology to create a new cinematic origin story.”
Interesting to say the least. I’ll be the first to admit that the book series does go off the rails a bit here and there, and one would expect some changes anyway considering how meta the whole thing gets by the end.
EW also got to check out a scene in that features the “Taheen, demonic, half-human creatures with animalistic qualities — but they are currently in our world. They disguise themselves as human beings with rubbery masks, but their true identities are given away by a scar-like red seam running down the sides of their necks.” Another pull from the books that should hopefully look really cool under director Nikolaj Arcel.
Probably the best quote from the whole piece is Idris Elba completely dismissing the race change of his character:
“It’s better just to treat it like no big deal,” Elba answers. “There should be no difference. The character that was written in Stephen’s imagination, it could be any color. It just happens to be me and, you know? In the artwork, it just so happens to be a white guy, but I don’t think that makes any difference. … I think what’s great about it, if I want to say anything about it, is that it is a sign of the times in terms of a colorless society. People go, ‘A good actor is a good actor,’ you know?”
