Stephen King's THE DARK TOWER

[Seph Stampede]

“You don’t sit down one day and say, ‘Well, I think I’ll write a magnus opus.’ But I said to myself, ‘This could be really long and really exciting and I wanna take a crack at it.’ Look what happened.” What happened, is that Stephen King (speaking exclusively in the brand new issue of Empire) wrote something so audaciously ambitious, so creatively complex, that it seemed unfilmable. The work in question? The Dark Tower, of course.

“It never seemed likely to me that someone would come along and want to make a film out of it,” King continues. “There were things from time to time, when people would talk about the possibility, but I never took it seriously.” The Dark Tower’s journey from page to screen has certainly been a colourful one, with J.J. Abrams attempting to adapt it alongside Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse as far back as 2007. Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman came on board in 2010, casting Javier Bardem as gunslinger Roland Deschain and planning to deliver three films with two television series sandwiched between. “I liked that idea,” King tells Empire. “Everybody did.”

Though Ron Howard eventually moved on, his replacement – first-time director Nikolaj Arcel (screenwriter for the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) – set about tackling Goldsman’s draft. “I like Akiva Goldsman as a writer very much,” says King. “[Akiva] said, ‘Why don’t we start in media res, in the middle of the story?’ Akiva’s idea and Nic’s idea, was to say, ‘Maybe this is the second time around for Roland Deschain…’”

After 10 years of in-production limbo, it was only “two years ago” when King started to actually believe this film would hit the big screen. Remarkably, The Dark Tower pops the author’s producing cherry, also gifted casting approval over an ensemble headed by Idris Elba (“in the books, it’s never said that Roland Deschain is a Caucasian person”) and Matthew McConaughey (“to me, he was always Walter, pretty much the way I’d imagined him. When people fall back from him in fear, you understand why”).

According to King, The Dark Tower “is something completely new that melds the Western with fantasy. This is a risky project. It’s not backed up by a bunch of comic books. [It's] scary. But I’m happy with what we’ve got.”

https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/stephen-king-talks-dark-tower-world-exclusive/

 

[EVILFACE]

RT predictions?

I'll say 55%

 

[Scareb]

RT predictions?

I'll say 55%

45% for me.

 

[Victοr]

It'd be lucky to hit 40%. This will be a commercial and critical bomb. I bet McConaughey will feel stupid passing on Ego for this. Not that I'm complaining. Kurt added a layer of Meta to the role.

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

RT predictions?

I'll say 55%

37% ...

 

[Wor-Gar]

Stark Tower..... Dark Tower....


Coincidence?

 

[Scareb]

Yeah I want to change mine to 30% now.

 

[Scareb]

Stark Tower..... Dark Tower....


Coincidence?

 

[Sweet Rabbit]

RT predictions?

I'll say 55%

Lower

 

[Bravomite]

As much as I want to like this movie and hope the it does well, I am anticipating it being a commercial and critical fail (I would love to eat humble pie if the opposite now happens haha).

Release date is fairly imminent and I am not seeing much advertisement or marketing for this film in the UK. Are they just hoping people who like the books will turn up and tell others to go? Seems unlikely when the fan base is already split on the strange casting choices and the apparent vast differences in approach to the narrative of the original story.

Unless a movie has a strong opening weekend it won't survive and the studio don't appear to be putting much money / effort into giving it a chance. Hopefully I am wrong but this looks to be another Ghost in the Shell / Valerian flop in the making.

RT score of 45% (which will be enough to turn people off from going)

 

[Sweet Rabbit]

I haven't seen much marketing for it around here either

 

[YoNoSe]

They're gonna bleed this one real quiet. Leave it in Walmart on in a two-pack with I, Frankenstein by Christmas.

 

[The Ween]

​I've seen commercials for it quite a bit late at night.

 

[Wor-Gar]

This movie.... bad fish.

 

[EVILFACE]

21%

After all this time and reading all those books I wanted to see them come to life in flicks, but this movie looks nothing like the book I read.

Defiantly not in 90 minutes.

 

[The Clown Prince of Crime]

 

[crows]

Anybody know why King turned down Darabont for this?

 

[Bravomite]

These reviews are not unexpected but they make me sad.

The books are epic and I'm sure all fans of the series just wanted to see that story play out on the big screen. Re-designing the central character so that he is nothing like the older grizzled Clint Eastwood / man with no name archetype that King envisaged and described in his books was a huge risk and also fairly maddening. Changing the narrative of the story also seemed like a another unnecessary risk.

I'm sure most fans were not thrilled when these changes were announced but hoped that they were made in service of a solid idea which would translate into a good movie adaptation of the Dark Tower (hopefully a series of films).

I love these books and I've been grumbling about the changes for what must feel like ages to my poor wife and friends haha. McConnaughey as the man in black is the only part that I'm excited about because the casting decision is faithful to the books. The rest of the changes are infuriating and a total gamble by a studio which has a history of taking established characters with great stories and then fumbling the ball...

Right now I fully expect this will be me when I see the film:

 

[Captain Clown]

21%

 

[EVILFACE]

View attachment 357621

"Hello Mr. Feige? Yea, I still have that Heimdall part, right?"