This is promising. Nikolaj Arcel's hotly anticipated adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series is due in July, though fans haven't seen much in terms of footage (outside of a leaked first trailer that promptly was pulled). We don't have word on the date of an official trailer dropping, so we can get our first good look Idris Elba's Roland of Gilead, but the marketing wheel of ka is beginning to spin, as a poster has dropped. See it here:
The line of dialogue on the poster for The Dark Tower, shared on the official Twitter page, is an important exchange between the Gunslinger, Roland (Idris Elba), and Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), the young boy he encounters first while on his trek to reach the Dark Tower of the movie's title. It's a line that bonds the two, and haunts them (eventually), though for casual fans and non-readers, I won't reveal why, so as not to spoil.
In this poster, though, we get a look at the three protagonists that are expected to power the first chapter in this unusual adaptation: Roland, Jake, and The Man In Black (Matthew McConaughey), aka Walter. In the first book of Stephen King's The Dark Tower Series, Roland pursues The Man in Black across a vast desert landscape. He eventually encounters Jake in a way station, though the environments on the poster suggest that this adaptation will draw from other books in the King series.
Why? Because the "Tower-Within-A-Tower" design of this cool new poster uses distinct Manhattan skyscrapers and symbology as it frames Roland and Jake on one end of the poster, and Walter on the other. Yet, readers of the series will know that Roland doesn't step into OUR world -- the journey that would take him to New York City -- until book two of the series, The Drawing of the Three. So will there be elements of Three in the first The Dark Tower movie? A trailer would go a long way toward helping explain that.
So, with a poster shared (by Stephen King, in addition), and a release date looming, a trailer HAS to be on the way, right? We, as die-hard The Dark Tower fans, are anxious to learn how this anticipated project will attempt to adapt King's vast tome. We know that it won't be a straight adaptation, as many have wrestled with the concept of pulling that off. Though Nikolaj Arcel seems to have cracked some path into The Dark Tower, and I want to see how much of The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three and -- what I think will be the case -- The Wastelands makes its way on screen.
The Dark Tower opens in theaters on July 28.
