One of Hollywood's most ambitious (and longest gestating) projects is finally bound for the big screen. Stephen King has confirmed that The Dark Tower — an adaptation of his sprawling series of the same name — has formally entered production. Idris Elba will star as protagonist Roland Deschain, opposite Matthew McConaughey as his nemesis, the man in black. Nikolaj Arcel — best known for helming 2012's A Royal Affair, which landed an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film — will direct.
The Dark Tower is often described as King's magnum opus, but the series' length and density — it spans eight hefty novels, contains hundreds of characters, and is basically impossible to coherently summarize — has made it enormously difficult to translate to the big screen. A near-miss came in 2010, when director Ron Howard mounted an ambitious plan to adapt The Dark Tower as a more focused film trilogy, with a supplemental cable TV series to flesh out the franchise's other stories. In the end, King told Entertainment Weekly, "cold feet and money" got in the way.
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