Stephen King Confirms 'The Dark Tower' with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey

While a film adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series has been discussed since at least 2007, nothing significant has materialized until now. King himself made the casting announcement that both Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey will be starring in the film, posting to Twitter, "It's official: The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." and tagging both Elba's and McConaughey's Twitter handles alongside the hashtag #DarkTowerMovie.

Idris Elba has been confirmed to play gunslinger Roland Deschain and Matthew McConaughey will play the mystical foe opposite him who goes by the man in black. Nikolaj Arcel will direct and co-write the film alongisde King, which currently has a January 13, 2017 release date. FIlming is set to begin in South Africa in April. Both Arcel and King spoke with Entertainment Weekly regarding the announcement.

“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.”

The Dark Tower series spans eight novels, one novella, and numerous comic books based on the novels that follow the conquests of Roland Deschain as he attempts to find the Dark Tower, which is said to be the nexus of all universes. The film will open with the first line fron the first book, according to King, but the film itself will not be an adaption of its plot.

“[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.

On casting Idris Elba on the film's main protagonist Roland, Arcel states, "For me, it just clicked. He’s such a formidable man.I had to go to Idris and tell him my vision for the entire journey with Roland and the ka-tet. We discussed, who is this character? What’s he about? What’s his quest? What’s his psychology? We tried to figure out if we saw the same guy. And we absolutely had all the same ideas and thoughts. He had a unique vision for who Roland would be.”

King himself had visualized Clint Eastwood as inspiration for Roland when writing the novels but has grown to be a fan of Arcel's choice in both Elba and McConaughey. Now that the two main characters have been cast the film is definitely happening. While there have been multiple failed attempts at turning this famed series into a film, this is the strongest it's ever looked.

“Other people have tried fantasy spectacle. Sometimes it works, sometimes it works really well when it’s based on a series of books, like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter, and sometimes it doesn’t,” King says. “What I have to go back to is this: We have Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, two great actors. You’ve got a great production team and Akiva Goldsman as the primary script writer. The team is in place, so we’ll hope for the best.”