“The war is over. You know what’s coming.” The Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) delivers a chilling message in the first of two promos for The Dark Tower.
On the eve of tomorrow’s grand trailer reveal, and following a Twitter exchange between leading stars Idris Elba and McConaughey – how wonderful is it that both tend to dip in and out of character when addressing one another online? – we now have our first official peek at Nikolaj Arcel’s wildly ambitious adaptation in motion.
Considering that the second teaser shifts the focus over to Idris Elba’s Roland Deschain (AKA The Gunslinger), this is very much Sony’s way of drawing the line between its two leading stars, with Elba hailing from the lighter side of the moral spectrum. By stark contrast, Matthew McConaughey’s Man in Black – a character that ought to be familiar to diehard Stephen King fans – is essentially the living embodiment of the devil himself, one who holds a tremendous amount of power over both Roland and the Earth itself. There are other worlds than these, it seems, and tomorrow we fully expect Sony to swing the doors open to its genre-blending adaptation.
It’s little more than a tiny speck on the horizon right now, but with tomorrow’s trailer reveal closing in fast, The Dark Tower is finally beginning to creep onto Hollywood’s radar – and not a moment too soon. Nikolaj Arcel’s long-in-development adaptation is booked in for a U.S. release on August 4th, and is expected to make its way across the pond in time for a UK launch on August 18th. Meanwhile, the second of today’s promos can be found below.
