Elba v McConaughey in The Dark Tower trailer
Idris Elba’s gunslinger will battle it out with Matthew McConaughey’s The Man in Black in this epic Stephen King adaptation
It looks like 2017 might be the year of Stephen King. As the author of Carrie, The Shining and Misery, King is no stranger to film and television versions of his novels, but the back-end of this year is particularly packed with adaptations of his work.
Upcoming is a series based on his novella The Mist, about a gateway accidentally opened by the US military that lets horrible monsters from another dimension into our world. There’s also a much anticipated two-part movie version of It, his terrifying horror novel about a creature that takes the form of a clown and kills a town’s children once a generation.
Both It and The Mist have been adapted before, but 2017 will see the first adaptation of King’s ongoing Dark Tower series, which pits Roland Deschain aka The Gunslinger against the evil Man In Black. Idris Elba takes the former role while Matthew McConaughey – who proved he makes an excellent bad guy in Killer Joe – takes the latter.
The first images from the film were released last night by the two actors on Twitter, in exchanges that are lifted from their characters.
@idriselba I know this. Deal with it. #DarkTowerMovie pic.twitter.com/NdDw4qtD0w
— Matthew McConaughey (@McConaughey) May 2, 2017
@McConaughey I deal in lead. #DarkTowerMovie pic.twitter.com/IvpjVKFHCH
— Idris Elba (@idriselba) May 2, 2017
The full first trailer for the film was also released this morning and can be viewed in the player above. The Dark Tower is released in the UK on 18 August.