Since the first book in the Dark Tower legacy, The Gunslinger, debuted in 1982, fans have been waiting to see Roland Deschain brought to life, which they’ll finally get to see when The Dark Tower hits theaters in August. For those unfamiliar with the character, who will be played by Idris Elba, a new featurette explores what makes the character so interesting. You can watch the featurette above.
“Roland Deschain comes from a sort of legacy of gunslingers who are put in place to protect the Dark Tower from the Man in Black,” Elba explains. “Roland is the last in that line.”
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“The Man in Black, he’s the evil in this battle of good and evil,” Matthew McConaughey explains of the character he portrays. “I need to bring down that tower.”
McConaughey adds, “Roland is actually the only one who can bring me down.”
“When I started The Dark Tower, I really saw the Gunslinger as this kind of concentrated force,” revealed Stephen King, author of the original novels. “The Dark Tower has always been really important to me and to see the character come to life in film with Idris Elba, it’s really incredible.”
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The long-awaited adaptation isn’t a direct re-telling of any of the specific books in the seminal fantasy series, but rather an amalgam story featuring many familiar elements from the series, while also injecting new elements. For fans both familiar and fresh, there’s plenty to look forward to with the upcoming film, which hits theaters August 4.
Fran Kranz, Jackie Earle Haley, Abbey Lee, and Kathryn Winnick also star in the film.
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Earlier this month, fans were treated to another adaptation of a classic Stephen King story with Spike’s The Mist TV series. Based on King’s novella, the series will expand the scale of the source material, focusing on how a town is affected by a nefarious fog that descends upon it.
Following the release of The Dark Tower, another highly-anticipated adaptation of a King story will hit theaters, as an updated version of It will be opening on September 8. Although a mini-series was previously released in 1990, the made-for-TV adaptation didn’t have the resources to fully explore the world of Pennywise, the terrifying clown, in a way the upcoming R-rated film has been able to.
