The Dark Tower Confirmations
Posted: March 1, 2016, 16:26
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- Nikolaj Arcel will start shooting the movie in South Africa in seven weeks.
- The Premier date is January 13 2017.
- The first movie won’t be based on the first book. Based on clues given by Arcel it’ll probably be based on the third book, The Waste Lands.
- Idris Elba is confirmed to play Roland.
- Matthew McConaughey is based to play The Man in Black.
- Abbey Lee will likely play Tirana.
“The thing is, it’s been a looong trip from the books to the film,” King says, putting it right in context: “When you think about it, I started these stories as a senior in college, sitting in a little sh-tty cabin beside the river in Maine, and finally this thing is actually in pre-production now.” He laughs. “I’m delighted, and I’m a little bit surprised.”
About the movie not being based on the first book.
King says the movie will open with the first line from the first book. “It should start that way,” he says. “I’ve been pretty insistent about that.”
“[The movie] starts in media res, in the middle of the story instead of at the beginning, which may upset some of the fans a little bit, but they’ll get behind it, because it is the story,” King says.
Arcel declined to specify which books his movie focus on, but he did offer this clue: “A lot of it takes place in our day, in the modern world.”
King and Arcel on Elba.
The author, who raves about Elba’s recent work in the child-soldier drama Beasts of No Nation, says he hopes fans of the books have no problem accepting a man of color as Roland. “For me the character is still the character. It’s almost a Sergio Leone character, like ‘the man with no name,’” King says. “He can be white or black, it makes no difference to me. I think it opens all kind of exciting possibilities for the backstory.”
Arcel acknowledges that skin color actually was an important factor in the relationship between Roland and Susannah, the black amputee he drew into his world from her life in 1964. In the books, she is not thrilled to find herself yanked into another dimension by a grizzled white guy. “Some fans are asking, understandably, ‘What about the racial tension?’” Arcel says. “But as the story progresses that will be made clear, how we’ll deal with all those things.”
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Read the full article here.
Thanks to Alex Maidy.
