The adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series is alive and kicking, and looking to add director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) to the project.
The Dark Tower will most certainly be a series of films and maybe even an accompanying TV show, but the adaptation has gone through a number of starts and stops. Most recently Ron Howard dropped out of the project (though he and his Imagine Entertainment will stay on board to produce), and Sony turned their attention to Arcel. While Arcel, who also co-wrote the Swedish adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, is a relative unknown as far as big-budget franchises are concerned, everyone started somewhere. And, according to the report from Deadline, Arcel’s dedication to learning the source material was what impressed Sony execs:
“Arcel, when he was getting going in Denmark, taught himself to speak and read English in order to consume Stephen King’s books in the writer’s native tongue. Arcel is a huge fan of The Dark Tower and knows the series well. That impressed the studio, and he showed with Dragon Tattoo that he could go dark, which is important in this series.”
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The Dark Tower series has potential to be a lucrative series for Sony, and if down right the stories are rich with world-building detail. The first story in the series, The Gunslinger, is some of King’s most fantasy-laden work, and Arcel appears to have the dedication to the source material to do it justice. If Arcel does a good job with The Gunslinger, he will certainly have a chance to direct the other two films in the series, The Drawing of The Three and The Waste Lands.
