In honor of Stephen King’s birthday, the makers of The Dark Tower film are unwrapping their plans for the saga’s companion TV series.
The movie — starring Idris Elba as the gunslinger Roland Deschain, and Matthew McConaughey as the menacing Man in Black — opens on Feb. 17 and explores the hero and villain’s opposing quests to reach an otherworldly tower that connects their apocalyptic realm with ours.
Ever since the film project was first proposed, it came packaged with an unusual idea: a spin-off TV show that would fill in the fantasy epic’s prodigious backstory.
Now, sources at production company MRC and the film’s executive producer and co-screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman, have revealed to Entertainment Weekly details about what they have planned for that series.
MRC has committed not just to making a pilot, but producing a full run of between 10 and 13 episodes, depending on how the scripts and story arcs develop. The Dark Tower show will begin shooting in 2017 with plans to premiere it in 2018, ideally around the time the film becomes available on cable or streaming services.
The bulk of the show will focus on the fourth book in the saga, Wizard and Glass, which told another tale of young Roland and his early tribulations. MRC created this map, overlayed with a quote from the book.
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