Warner Bros. is getting ready to make a decision on if they are going to move forward with Ron Howard's master plan to bring Stephen King's epic The Dark Tower supernatural western novel series to the big and small screens.
Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman is about to turn in his script to the studio for the first installment of the film series. According to Deadline the Warner Bros. will make a decision in two weeks on whether or not they are going to move forward with the first phase of the ambitious plan.
The biggest news to come out of this report is that Javier Bardem is no longer attached to the project as the main character Roland Deschain. Howard and producer brian Grazier have instead been talking with their friend Russell Crowe about taking over the lead role. Crowe worked with them on A Beautiful Mind. As excited as I was for Bardem to play Roland I think Crowe is a better choice. He's had experience with westerns already, 3:10 To Yuma being one of my favorites. As of right now nothing is officially set in stone, but when Warner Bros. makes their decision it will be based in part on Crowes attachment. Hopefully Crowe officially jumps on board as it will help the movies chances of getting made.
The plan is to tell the nine volume book series in the form of there movie and two limited run TV series. This is one of the most epically ambitious projects ever, and I hope it goes through! The studio just green lit a third Hobbit film, and I don't see why in the hell they wouldn't move forward on this Dark Tower series, this is the kind of franchise that makes history! Not since The Lord of the Rings has a movie project been big.
In two weeks we'll know what the outcome is, and I truly hope that the studio decides to move forward with this project. It would be a bloody shame if they didn't! Warner Bros. seems like the perfect home for this project. As of right now the TV part of the series would air on HBO.
What do you think about Crowe taking on the role of Roland in the film? Who else could you see being cast now that Bardem is out of the picture?
In the story, Roland Deschain is the last living member of a knightly order known as gunslingers and the last of the line of “Arthur Eld”, his world’s analogue of King Arthur. The world he lives in is quite different from our own, yet it bears striking similarities to it. Politically organized along the lines of a feudal society, it shares technological and social characteristics with the American Old West but is also magical. While the magical aspects are largely gone from Mid-World, some vestiges of them remain, along with the relics of a highly advanced, but long vanished, society.
Roland’s quest is to find the Dark Tower, a fabled building said to be the nexus of all universes. Roland’s world is said to have “moved on”, and indeed it appears to be coming apart at the seams as mighty nations have been torn apart by war, entire cities and regions vanish without a trace and time does not flow in an orderly fashion. Even the Sun sometimes rises in the north and sets in the east. As the series opens, Roland’s motives, goals and age are unclear, though later installments shed light on these mysteries.