British actor Idris Elba, hot off the buzz around the superb Beasts Of No Nation, is eyeing The Dark Tower adaptation which Nikolaj Arcel is directing. Elba is potentially up to play the role of gunslinger Roland Deschain in the adaptation of the Stephen King novel, squaring off against the rumoured-to-be-in-talks Matthew McConaughey, who would play the villain of the piece, the Man In Black.
There is no official word of the casting, or indeed the talks with the studio (Sony) keeping things quiet.
King’s series of books cover a multitude of genres, including dark fantasy, science fantasy, horror, and the western.
Here’s WikiPedia‘s summary of the story.
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. Politically organized along the lines of a feudal society, it shares technological and social characteristics with the American Old West but is also magical. Many of the magical aspects have vanished from Mid-World, but traces remain as do relics from a technologically advanced 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 it appears to be coming apart at the seams. 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. Sometimes, even the sun 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.
We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
