Idris Elba To Play Lead In The Dark Tower

Warner Bros. is dusting off the climbing gear to scale Stephen King’s The Dark Tower,  according to Entertainment Weekly, King has officially confirmed that Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey are now locked to play lead gunslinger Roland Deschain and Randall Flag respectively. They’ll be joined on their journey by Abbey Lee.

Guiding King’s seminal tome to the big screen is Nikolaj Arcel and he’ll be largely working with The Gunslinger, the first installment in King’s genre-defining saga. Speaking to EW, the author himself spoke candidly about not only The Dark Tower‘s prolonged journey to the starting line, but also why he’s a little surprised it arrived in the first place. He said “The thing is, it’s been a looong trip from the books to the film. 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”.

Making it officially official, King also Tweeted out the following message to his legions of fans:

Akiva Goldsman, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Erica Huggins are among the producing team for The Dark Tower. For now, Warner Bros. long-gestating adaptation is tentatively slated for a release on January 13, 2017 and even with production now on the verge of getting underway, don’t be too surprised if and when WB nudges that due date further into 2017.