Ron Howard and Brian Grazer have been trying to mount their ambitious plan for Stephen King's The Dark Tower so long that it's hardly worth going over again. Essentially, they want it to be a gigantic cross-platform franchise spanning film and TV, a plan so huge they've had trouble finding a studio to back it. But now it's landed over at Sony, and they've just scored a talented director to finally make it all happen.
According to Deadline, Nikolaj Arcel, director of the Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair, and writer of the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, has come aboard to helm The Dark Tower. He'll also give a rewrite to the screenplay that will help map out this huge franchise set in a world of myth, magic, gunslingers like lead character Roland Deschain. Arcel is apparently an uber-fan of the novels, a fact which helped win him the gig.
Everything remains in place for it to be a film and TV franchise, and we're still waiting to hear how that will play out. Sony's been starved for franchises (hence all the Ghostbusters/21 Jump Street expansions) and this could be just what they're looking for. Now they need to find an actor to play Deschain. Russell Crowe and Javier Bardem were the most high-profile candidates before, but that was a few years ago and things have likely changed.
