Hey guys, Jana here,
Fans of the brilliant writer Stephen King get excited when we see a new film being made based on one of his brilliant tomes. We got creeped out by our dead pets in ‘Pet Sematary‘, our healthy fear of clowns graduated into a full on psychosis after seeing Pennywise as ‘It‘, groaned in pain when we saw ‘Misery‘ on the big screen, in short, we laughed, we cried, we cringed and we loved every minute of it. One novel that has had trouble making it’s way to the silver screen is King’s western epic better known as the collective work of ‘The Gunslinger‘.
One of the stumbling blocks to bringing this mammoth narrative to fruition as a feature is working with a director that will accurately translate King’s written word to a viewable platform. Sony Pictures Entertainment is in talks with Nikolaj Arcel to pick up the director’s title and run with it. Sony joined with Media Rights Capital earlier in 2015 to co-finance the franchise. Arcel’s being pursued for what has been designed as the first in a series of movies, there is a companion TV series being developed by MRC as well. Whomever takes on the top position will be responsible for overseeing a rewrite and working in cooperation with a number of heavyweight producers that have been attached since the beginning including Akiva Goldsman, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Erica Huggins, King is also involved, personally, in a producer capacity.
Arcel has all the skills necessary to make this a successful project. He co-scripted the Swedish version of the crazy popular Stieg Larsson novel ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo‘, he directed the Oscar nominated ‘A Royal Affair‘ and has signed on to direct ‘The Power Of The Dog‘ based on the bestselling novel by Don Winslow. Arcel made learning English a priority in order to immerse himself in King’s novels in the writer’s native language, he especially enjoyed ‘The Dark Tower‘ and knows the series well enough to show the studio he would be not just a good choice, but the right choice for the project.
The first film will be based on the first book of the series, ‘The Gunslinger‘, where we will be introduced to its namesake, Roland Deschain and his relationship with his young protege Jake Chambers. Next up will be finding the right actor to play Roland. There have been so many rumors of who would be right for the role from Russell Crowe to Javier Bardem that it will be nice to see who will finally embody the role.