It’s been a long and winding road for Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman’s aim to bring an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower to some sort of screen. It’s finally on a faster track, and The Wrap has learned that Matthew McConaughey has been approached to star.
Quite what role he’ll take is still cloudy – this is a very early proposition and neither studio backers Sony nor McConaughey’s team have made any sort of official commitment. But the man who once starred in EdTV for Howard has apparently been offered his choice of main characters – Gunslinger Roland Deschain or the evil Man in Black – and the site’s sources have heard that he’s intrigued by the idea of going to the dark side for this one.
The film, which represents the first step in the plan to bring the story to cinemas (plus a companion TV series which is in development), would follow Deschain as he quests to locate the titular tower, a central point in the universe, before dark forces invade and destroy it, wiping out reality as we know it. Goldsman and Jeff Pinker have adapted this latest script from King’s first book in the series, The Gunslinger.
A Royal Affair’s Nikolaj Arcel is in the director’s chair, and the film currently has a release date pencilled in for January 13, 2017. McConaughey, meanwhile, will be back on our screens in Gold and The Free State Of Jones, neither of which have solid UK dates yet.