It seems like people have been trying to turn Stephen King’s Dark Tower series into a movie for decades—and they probably have, at least on different levels of reality—but now director Nikolaj Arcel is actually making it happen. Seriously, there are set photos and everything. It’s really happening for real.
Of course, when a project has been in the works for as long as The Dark Tower has, it’s easy for the hype machine to get a little carried away and let people’s expectations get too high. From there, it’s also easy for that hype to swing back around to the internet’s traditionally cynical outlook. Obviously, it’s too early to say whether or not Arcel’s movie will be a worthy adaptation of King’s sprawling epic, but at the very least, star Idris Elba seems to be doing his best to keep fans on the optimistic side of things.
First there was this Twitter exchange Elba had with Matthew McConaughey—who is playing the villainous Man In Black—that was a specific nod to the first book’s opening line (“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”):
And this weekend, in honor of Father’s Day, Elba dug deeper into the mythology of the books to salute the lineage of his character, Roland Deschain:
The “Arthur” he’s referencing is Arthur Eld, the Dark Tower universe’s take on King Arthur, whose legendary sword Excalibur was melted down to make the revolvers that Roland carries on his quest. Also, the symbol in the picture is Arthur Eld’s sigil from the books, and “remember the face of your father” is a well-known expression in that world that essentially means “keep it together.” In other words, these are solid references that seem to indicate that the people making this movie actually know what they’re doing.
Granted, a faithful adaptation doesn’t necessarily make for a good movie, but as far as a long-running series of fantasy books is concerned…maybe it does? Either way, it’s a lot of fun to nerd out when a famous actor quotes The Dark Tower on Twitter.