Stephen King's The Dark Tower: all the trailers and updates for the fantasy franchise

In the spirit of fairness, nobody expected Stephen King to pop up in the Dark Tower movie.

He’s certainly there in the original novels. King’s psychopathically ambitious fantasy series, now condensed into a big-screen adaptation directed by Nikolaj Arcel, shows up in person to confront his characters in the series’ final book. Heroes Roland Deschain and Jake Chambers (who previously died, but also kind of didn’t, but now he’s fine, so don’t worry about it) travel to our world and save King from the real-life fatal van accident that nearly killed him in 1999. Their intervention ensures King can live on to write the Dark Tower novels, and they can continue their fictional quest to defend the Tower, the nexus of all realities.

For Stephen King fans at the turn of the millennium, the Dark Tower series was what George R.R. Martin’s Song Of Ice And Fire is now: a gritty epic that stood as its author’s most sweeping accomplishment, but looked like it might never be finished. King’s genre-hopping series about a grim hero from a post-apocalyptic world, eternally battling his way across realities toward a mystical tower, launched in 1982 with The Gunslinger. But the sequels came at distressingly long intervals, and it frequently seemed as though King had shelved his magnum opus entirely. Fans waited more than 20 years for the complete story, which spanned thousands of pages and seven books, plus a later anthology, a series of graphic novels that expanded the series’ backstory, and a long series of crossover references in seemingly unrelated King novels and stories. 

So it’s inevitable that the first film adaptation would be something of a disappointment for fans, because no one movie — especially not one that clocks in at a scant 95 minutes — could possibly live up to the epic image of this character and this world in their heads. And it’s particularly difficult to adjust to the way the story has been remodeled for a mainstream audience, and steamrollered flat into a familiar fantasy form. The Dark Tower, helmed by Danish director Nikolaj Arcel, is so simplified in places that it seems outright generic.

The trailer for The Dark Tower dropped early this morning, giving us our first glimpse of the long-awaited adaptation of Stephen King’s epic series. But this film isn’t your typical adaptation, where the movie is largely based on the novel. This movie is actually a kind of sequel to the entire series, and there are bigger plans beyond just a film franchise for the story.

So, what’s the deal with this project? And what can we expect when the movie hits in August?

Stephen King’s novel The Dark Tower has undergone a long and twisted path to become a movie. Now, just a few short months from release, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel: the first official trailer was added as an unlisted video on Sony Picture’s YouTube page two days ago. Now, it’s trickling out.

This is our first official look at the film. Last October, an early trailer for the film leaked, and was quickly taken down. This trailer shows young Jake Chambers (Legends’ Tom Taylor) explaining his visions of the Gunslinger (Idris Elba) and the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) to a child psychologist who tells him they’re just dreams. But nope! Suddenly he’s in the mysterious other dimension called Mid-World, and the Gunslinger is explaining that 1) he’s not a Gunslinger because there aren’t Gunslingers anymore, and 2) the Man in Black isn’t “like the devil,” he’s actually worse than the devil. There’s a quest to save mankind, and several chilling one-liners like “death always wins” and “I do not kill with my gun, I kill with my heart.”

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is already on the way for its February theatrical debut, but the people behind the film are also working on a companion TV series. Entertainment Weekly reports that, for King’s 69th birthday, production company MRC and Sony Pictures have revealed that they’re developing a spinoff series that will flesh out the film’s mythology. A prequel, the show will explore the backstory of the gunslinger Roland Deschain, played by Idris Elba — Elba is even due to appear on the show in some capacity.

Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey are officially heading up the forthcoming film adaptation of Stephen King's fantasy-horror series The Dark Tower. King confirmed the casting on Twitter this afternoon, putting a cap on months of speculation regarding the actors' involvement. Elba will play Roland Deschain, the gunslinger hunting for the titular tower, and McConaughey will play the "man in black," the mysterious sorcerer who finds himself pursued. The movie is still scheduled to be released on January 13th, 2017, and it's entering production now.

King and director / co-writer Nikolaj Arcel expanded on their plans to adapt King's magnum opus in an interview with Entertainment Weekly published this morning. The project has exchanged hands several times over the last decade-plus, passing through multiple studios and directors; it spans eight books, several supplementary releases, and a complex canon, making it a difficult subject for adaptation no matter the personnel involved. "It's been a looong trip from the books to the film," said King. "When you think about it, I started these stories as a senior in college, sitting in a little shitty cabin beside the river in Maine, and finally this thing is actually in pre-production now. I'm delighted, and I'm a little bit surprised."