Many of us geeks were very excited about the prospects of a Dark Tower movie, especially considering there were ambitious plans to make it a three part movie, with a TV series to run in-between movies. That all fell apart at Universal, who will be in the Fast and Furious business for a long time to come, as well as at Warner Brothers.
We figured the project was as good as dead, but comes news from Deadline that Nikolaj Arcel, who helmed the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie, and it’s certainly an interesting pick. A lot of fans weren’t nuts about Ron Howard directing, along with one of his favorite screenwriters, Akiva Goldsman (aka Hack-iva Goldsman) writing the adaptation.
The Dark Tower is now set up at Sony, where the new head of the studio, Tom Rothman, clearly wants to hit the ground running. While the major studios are more risk adverse than ever, at least The Dark Tower is based on a well known, previously existing franchise from one of the biggest writers in the world, and that may assuage some fears.
As Deadline tells us, Arcel taught himself English so he could read Stephen King’s work, and he’s a big fan of the Dark Tower series, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that it could go the distance this time. As for whether it will be three movies long, nobody’s saying yet, but the gunslinger needs to be cast, but Javier Bardem and Russell Crowe were both up for it.
