Category Archives: Other Worlds than these – Dark Tower Coverage

Trouble along the Beam

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The adaption of Stephen King’s Magnum Opus The Dark Tower might be in a little trouble according to Variety:

Sources tell Variety that in the past few days, the project, based on Stephen King’s sweeping seven-book-and-counting series, has run into budgetary complications that have caused Universal execs to rethink original plans. Insiders expect U brass to meet in coming days to decide whether to put the project into turnaround, whereby producer Imagine Entertainment could shop it to another studio, either to partner with Universal or take over entirely.

[...] With a project of this size and scope, it wouldn’t be unusual for any studio to weigh its risk-sharing options — or pulling out — at this stage of development. And “Dark Tower” isn’t the only major project that Universal has recently reconsidered. “At the Mountains of Madness,” which had Guillermo del Toro set to direct and Tom Cruise circling to star, was scrapped on the brink of lensing after U calculated that it would struggle to make money with its $150 million budget and R rating.

The mention of the recently cancelled H.P. Lovecraft adaption reminds me how easy awesome projects like Mountains of Madness can get tossed aside no matter how creatively intersting they might become. Seeing that the project Dark Tower as laid out by Ron Howard is wildly ambitious it is not very surprising that problems like this might occure – I just hope they prevail and that events like this will be told similar to the success stories of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Avatar (very troubled production, so ambitious, almost cancelled but prevailed in the end).

Well there will be water if god wills it…

Oh Sai King you have returned to Mid-World!

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So much for empty promises!

The story of the Dark Tower is finished and for a time I thought Stephen King would only revisit the world of his gunslinger via other books*, most notably the third installment in the collaboration with Peter Straub that started with The Talisman.
But apparently his mind has returned to Mid-World. There were hints when a poll appeared if the next Stephen King novel should be a sequel to the Shinning or a novel set in Mid-World.

Well… it is not just set in Mid-World:

In 2012 Old long tall and ugly will return in the novel The Wind through the Keyhole – official announcement here.

The novel will be set between Dark Tower IV and V since in the fifth part there is an obvious timegap signalling the second big story-segment – also narratively the tone shifts since V, V and VII were written in one massive etappe contrary to the previous books that were finished and released without the sequels being planned out.
Many fans hate that about the last three books, but the reason was clearly that after King’s almost fatal accident he did not want to die and leave the story untold so he went to finish his life-work after escaping death so very closely.

That being said I am of course thrilled to return to the Ka-tet of Roland and find out what they did. King writes himself:

It won’t tell you much that’s new about Roland and his friends, but there’s a lot none of us knew about Mid-World, both past and present. The novel is shorter than DT 2-7, but quite a bit longer than the first volume—call this one DT-4.5. It’s not going to change anybody’s life, but God, I had fun.

I hope we will have fun too!

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* For those who don’t know: The Dark Tower is a construct that in the story connects time and space in all it’s incarnations. This is true not only for the seven books but for all of Stephen King’s books: they are just “other worlds than these” all held together by The Dark Tower. So whenever you grab a Stephen King book you will find traces of Roland’s journey as well as themes that stem from or towards the Dark Tower series.

Javier Bardem is Roland Deschain in The Dark Tower

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After some announcements that studio executives wanted Javier Bardem in the iconic role of Roland Deschain for the 2013 adaption of The Dark Tower

A well-placed source confirmed to Page Six, “Bardem has signed on to the first movie and the miniseries, but the intention is that he will star in all three movies and each of the TV series.
It’s an enormous deal for any actor, but Bardem was
always the first choice.”

newyorkpost

So they got an oscar winning actor to play in a TV-series as well.
I hope this well placed source is not the same source that has brought us all those Black Mask insider infos about The Dark Knight Rises.

Anyway, this project might really be happening (I still cannot really believe that), so I’d urge all of you to read at least the first (300 pages) novel “The Gunslinger” of The Dark Tower to get your own image of this bizare and unique world by Stephen King!

Long days and pleasant nights

This week “Long tall and ugly” will be revealed!

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http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2011/01/18/the-dark-tower-casting-roland-brian-grazer

Grazer did say, however, that a casting announcement is imminent. How imminent? “Within a week,” he said. Seriously? “Seriously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seriously,” he assured us before asking, “Who do you want?” Honestly, we’ll take either of them. “OK, great,” Grazer concluded. We couldn’t agree more.

Excited is a bit of an understatement…

Ron Howard Interview about The Dark Tower

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Check out this review from December 17th with Dark Tower director Ron Howard over at herocomplex.

He even talks about the casting of Roland and that Viggo Mortensen seems to be the fan favorite.

Howard said the 36 issues that have been published so far absolutely inform his own view  of the mythology.

Well… don’t beforehand…

And if Craig doesn’t get to play Roland we will still see him in the role of a cowboy in Jon Fanvreau’s (Iron Man) Cowboys and Aliens, a movie where… cowboys… and… aliens!

 

The first good Dark Tower news/rumors are surfacing

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The thing I said to myself when The Dark Tower movie started to take shape was that I wouldn’t prematurely judge the movie or anything related to the talents and creative decisions that are made.

Yes, Akiva Goldsman has written Batman and Robin… but let’s give it a try.

Now moviefone reports that from five actors interested in starring as the legendary Roland Deschain:

Jon Hamm
Hugh Jackman
Daniel Craig
Viggo Mortensen

But it seems as if the producers want another actor for Roland:

Academy Award winning Actor Javier Bardem.

Now of course we all have to see what the outcome will be, but frankly I am surprised at the caliber of actor they are looking for. Of course the casting of Roland is pivotal to everything, but the fact that they would have a spinoff television series made me think they would hire actors in the range of Lost (Michael Emmerson, Terry O’Quinn) who are fantastic performers, but not that expensive compared to someone like Hugh Jackman.

Now with Bardem I really have to be biased – I just adore this actor, he is fantastic (and the only good thing about Vicky Christina Barcelona) especially in Before Night Falls (where he plays Reinaldo Arenas, a writer who has to leave Cuba) and (obvious choice) No Country for Old Men.

With Roland an actor who can portray a vast range of emotions is required. Roland is sometimes like a robot, going onwards towards the Dark Tower, never surrendering, never compromising. And on other occasions he has breakdowns and genuinely touching moments.

So if you have witnessed Bardem wreak havoc as Anton Chigurh I’d say he can do the stoic dedicated Roland in his sleep.

And please don’t start whining about his not-blue eyes… (more on that to come)

The Dark Tower coming to cinemas in 2013

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M-O-O-N, that spells excitment,

According to boxofficemojo.com, The Dark Tower is set to hit theaters in 2013.

To say I am looking forward to this project wouldn’t quite cut it – if there is one story that stands above every other story I’ve ever read, it would be The Dark Tower by Stephen King. The experience of reading The Dark Tower was beyond anything I’ve read before, the unique mixture of Horror, Fantasy, Sci Fi, Time Travelling and the art of storytelling itself is held together by some of the greatest and (in the main character’s case) most complex/intriguing characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading about them.

Now the bad news first:
It is NOT directed by J.J. Abrahms and his team. Originally Stephen King left the rights for Dark Tower to J.J. Abrahms for a sum of 19 dollars (a very important number in the books) to turn it into a movie, but with Abrahms being pretty busy right now (Super 8 coming next year and Star Trek 12 in 2012) he dropped the deal.

Why would Abrahms be a perfect candidate for adapting Dark Tower?
Abrahms might not be the greatest director of all time, but he knows how to tell a story and get people interested in a story, he can sell his product and when you look at something like Dark Tower which demands to have at least 3 movies, you have to keep people’s interest.

Abrahms was the one who turned Lost from “people surviving a planecrash and doing island life stuff” to “people surviving a planecrash on an island where a smokemonster is hunting them and there’s a hatch that leads somewhere and people who are dead pop out” – now imagine how popular and interesting Lost would have been without Abrahms.

The same goes for Star Trek, he injected life in a franchise that was essentially dead and while there were some fanboys complaining and doing the usual angry fanboy stuff, Star Trek 11 was one of the most acclaimed Star Trek movies.

It had good acting, visual effects, exciting adventures, humour and stayed true to the essence of Star Trek.

J.J. Abrahms could have sold Dark Tower to audiences without selling out and then leave other directors to tell the rest of the story (like he did with Lost, but when we look at the final season of Lost we might get Abrahms back again…)

But… there is no point in further grieving about this decision, the guy to make Dark Tower will be Ron Howard.

The director
The director of Apollo 13, Cinderella Man, A beautiful mind, Frost/Nixon and (one of my favorite Christmas movies) How the Grinch stole Christmas.

But… he also directed The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.
While both adaptions more or less translated the book to the screen (in Da Vinci Code’s case almost page for page) he didn’t bring much new to the table, which resulted in average lackluster movies.

His oscar movies are serviceable but none of them really affected me that much (in Frost/Nixon’s case next to Benjamin Button it was the movie from 2008′s season which I forgot the quickest). But maybe I’m just one of these angry bitching fanboys so I won’t rant much longer.

The project
The Dark Tower will be a movie trilogy.
Now we could scream out: what a trilogy? But The Dark Tower is about 8000+ pages (7 books), this will never work! They should do it the Harry Potter way!
There is one obvious reason: Harry Potter had the massive hype back up to justify 7 (and now 8) movies. Dark Tower is a very unknown brand to the public and therefore it doesn’t have enough weight to producers to warrant a 7 pictures deal, but when we think about adaptions like The Da Vinci code and Watchmen, adaptions who suffered from religiously following the source material, this might actually force creativity to readapt the story for the new medium.

Also the trilogy will also be expanded by a television series spanning 2 seasons:

The plan is to start with the feature film, and then create a bridge to the second feature with a season of TV episodes. That means the feature cast—and the big star who’ll play Deschain—also has to appear in the TV series before returning to the second film. After that sequel is done, the TV series picks up again, this time focusing on Deschain as a young gunslinger. Those storylines will be informed by a prequel comic book series that King was heavily involved in plotting. The third film would pick up the mature Deshain as he completes his journey. They will benefit from being able to use the same sets cast and crew for the movie and TV, which could help contain costs on what will be a financially ambitious undertaking.

www.deadline.com

If they manage to pull this of against all odds, this might actually be worthy of Dark Tower. Dark Tower is about how we tell stories and why we tell stories. It combines movies, comics, novels, myths into one big story about stories, so a unique story like this would demand a unique approach like the one Howard is planning, maybe he really can do it… let’s just hope that paragraph about storylines from the Dark Tower comics is an empty threat.

There is but one thing I’d like to point out:

Akiva Goldsman is writing the script
Goldsman wrote Cinderella Man a Beautiful Mind and both of Ron Howards Dan Brown movies… sounds ok, right?

Well he also wrote the screenplay for two other movies: