When Stephen King’s magnum opus begins its life on the screen, it won’t just be the books that have an influence on the final product. Director Ron Howard says the on-going comic book adaptations/series will also play a major role.
Published by Marvel and featuring some stunning artwork, the comics have been going strong for the past several years and are approved by King as part of the Dark Tower mythos.
“It’s the ongoing evolution of the characters and the discovery,” Howard said of the “Dark Tower” comic books. “There are new interpretations of the rules of the world and the story. It’s a really useful and compelling part of this already fascinating creative journey that we’re on.”
Howard acknowledged several different actors whose names have been mentioned in connection with the role of Roland, including Daniel Craig, Hugh Jackman, Jon Hamm and Viggo Mortensen. But the director didn’t provide a personal preference for who should play the character.
“It’s different than anything I’ve ever done and in really interesting ways,” Howard surmised of the project. “With [‘The Da Vinci Code’] the mandate was different. That was about getting the story and the action and focusing on acting. With this, there’s this entire world and all of these references and there are the books and the graphic novels and just talking to Stephen and it’s all this ongoing conversation with the material and it’s really exciting. In all of it, he leaves a lot open to interpretation and so it gives a great deal of latitude.”
I could see either Hugh Jackman or Viggo Mortensen in the role of Roland but not the other two.
one of the greatest failures that the majority of King-story adaptations has suffered is manifold: the curse of ‘made for t.v., the curse of cinematic release, and, of course, the pusillanimous curse; i.e. we are afraid to offend. King tells gritty, dirty, realistic (yeah, I know… bit of an oxymoron) stories… which makes them fit only for HBO and/or Skinemax, in a miniseries form, at the very least, if you want any justice done to the stories. As a fan of King, and a many-times-disappointed fan of King’s movies, I have to say that I hope Howard does this one right…. he ALMOST got it right with the Davinci Code and Angels and Demons.