I swore that I’d started a thread about The Dark Tower before… Oh well!
Apparently, director Ron Howard has got someone in mind for his leading man. He’s got my approval!
For those unfamiliar with The Dark Tower, the linked article gives somewhat of a rundown. It’s basically Stephen King’s seminal fantasy series based on gunslinger Roland Deschain’s quest to find the Dark Tower, which is the nexus of all universes.
More DT news:
Is anyone else even interested? 
I’m interested. 
(Although I haven’t actually read the books yet 
)
Better get started, there’s 3712 pages to get through! 
Although you have got until 17th May 2013, and that’s just for the first instalment.
Apparently (this is just something I read on Wikipedia), the adaptation will comprise 5 alternating films and TV series: film, TV, film, TV, film. The films will be more action-driven whilst the TV series spend time to focus on the characters… so what, they’ll be soap operas?
That’s 764 days to go then meaning I’ll need to average 4.9 pages a day (worryingly that’s probably higher than my normal rate for getting through a book).
Unless the films stand alone (ie without the tv progs) then the 2nd and 3rd would be complete turd - you can’t expect people to watch a TV series, and if people know that that’s where the plot is being developed, then they won’t bother going to see the subsequent films, will they?
It’s certainly an unusual idea, and probably a bit of a gamble. To me, it has all the airs of Lost in terms of the commitment it will demand from its audience (as well as some themes), and that certainly suffered as a result.
Having read the series, I’ve been trying to get my head around how they might break it up suitably and have so far come up short. In my opinion, a trilogy of films would probably have been best, even if it did result in some quite substantial chopping and changing of the source material.
One thing’s for sure: Stephen King is milking it for all it’s worth. There’s been an ongoing comic book adaptation of Dark Tower (and his second largest volume, The Stand) for several years now, and there’s an eighth Dark Tower book due out in 2012 which seems entirely unnecessary given that the tale was quite satisfactorily concluded at the end of the seventh. Apparently he said: “It’s not really done yet. Those seven books are really sections of one long über-novel.” Well yes Stephen, yes they are sections. And as seven already self-indulgent sections, they comprise the whole ‘über-novel’ sufficiently. From what Wikipedia has to say, it sounds like he’s going back to fill in a plot hole… Urgh.
[size=]In case you can’t tell, I sorta have a love/hate relationship with King.[/size]
Looks like the Dark Tower films are in trouble:
http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=31502