The Story Overview
Stephen King called the Dark Tower series his magnum opus, his Arthurian tale. The series, inspired by Robert Browning’s poem “Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, tells the story of Roland Deschain, a gunslinger, who is on a quest to save the Dark Tower from total collapse at the hands of an evil magician, Walter O’Dim, also known as the man in black. It is a tale that spans across multi-dimensional universes that are all connected by the Dark Tower.
Main Cast
Roland Deschain is played by British actor Idris Elba. Elba has appeared in several series and films such as the HBO series The Wire (2002), BBC One series Luther (2010), The Unborn (2009), Prometheus (2012), and Thor: The Dark World (2013). In 2016, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Elba the title Office of the Order of the British Empire for his service in drama.
Matthew McConaughey who plays the man in black is a well-known American actor most famous for his roles in Interstellar (2014), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Dallas Buyers Club (2013), and Mud (2012). McConaughey won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club.
Upcoming child star, Tom Taylor, was casted for the role of Jake Chambers, the young boy who touches the heart of gunslinger, Roland Deschain. Taylor acted in two projects prior to The Dark Tower: Broken Hearts (2012) and BBC drama series Doctor Foster (2015).
Gunslinger vs. The Man in Black
According to the novel, The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger, Roland Deschain, the last of his kind, travels across the desert to track down the man in black, Walter O’Dim, who is responsible for the destruction and slaughter of his clan. Deschain must balance his obsession for revenge with his true quest of reaching the dark tower alive.
Release Date
The Dark Tower hits theaters on August 4, 2017. Showing times and tickets are available on Fandango.
Will it be True to the Series?
As with most movie adaptations, the script will not exactly mirror the book. From just viewing the preview, the movie does not hold true to the storyline of the books. According to Entertainment Weekly, the movie does not draw from just one book but rather all of them. This may confuse some of the fans of King’s Dark Tower series. Anthony Breznican in his article “The Dark Tower: How the movie draws from 8 novels,” states that the crafting of The Dark Tower is akin to the crafting of superhero movies.
