Because he's such a prolific author there are always more than a couple of Stephen King adaptations on he way at any given point, and arguably two of his biggest works are on the way in the next year. Just yesterday we got a look at the evil Pennywise in Andres Muschietti's It, and while there have already been tons of set photos released for it, the first official look at The Dark Tower is here now, too.
The images reveal Idris Elba as the heroic gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and Matthew McConaughey pretty much looking like himself as the villainous Man in Black. The unenviable task of adapting King's multi-novel series into a single film combining Western-style gunfights, mystical sorcery, and more. So how are they going to pull that off? By tossing audiences into the middle of the action feet first. Elba tells EW...
“When we meet Roland he’s a bit lost. He’s been walking around for a long time, so he definitely feels like a man who’s… coiled...There’s a mystical element to him. He’s about 200 years old. He’s been around for a long time, and has a deep-rooted connection with the [supernatural] nature of the film. Roland’s completely tuned into that. When you meet him, he’s very much a stoic man, doesn’t want to talk. But when you get to know him, he really knows quite a bit about the world and his world’s history.”
It's also a chance for McConaughey to indulge in playing one of literature's great bad guys, one with plans of destroying the entire world. He says about taking on the role of Walter Padick, who some would consider the embodiment of evil more than an actual man...
“Well, he is a man, actually. They wanted to go very human and grounded with this. Obviously there are mythical proportions of good and evil in Walter. But we didn’t want to go overly fantastic. That would drop the humanity. So Walter, for me, is a man who exposes hypocrisies.”
The Dark Tower opens February 17th 2017.
