New Dark Tower image from author Stephen King hints at big changes

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WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the ending of Stephen King's The Dark Tower book series.

Book-to-film adaptations can be tricky; Stick too closely to the source material and the movie could suffer, but stray too far from what you're adapting and you risk alienating the fans. For better or worse, it looks like The Dark Tower movie will be going off-book, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing.

Fans of the book will know that Roland Deschain (who will be played by Idris Elba in the movie) is on a quest to defeat the Crimson King at the titular tower - which is essentially the center of all realities - and blow the Horn of Eld. When readers meet Roland in book one, however, he has long since lost the horn. At the end of the seven book journey Roland walks through a door at the top of the tower, but instead of finishing his mission he gets sapped of his memories and sucked back to the start of book one. He's being forced to live out his quest until he gets it right. This time though, he has the horn...

King's tweet therefore implies that director Nikolaj Arcel's movie is more of a continuation than a direct adaptation, and it's a really smart narrative choice. Essentially, it allows for plenty of potentially fun changes between the book and the movie; it can be both a retelling AND a sequel to the books. Assuming there are no plans for more movies, it could also mean that the adaptation could provide a definitive ending to the saga. In other words...it's genius.  

Directed by Nikolaj Arcel, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Idris Elba, Jackie Earle Haley, Fran Kranz, Abbey Lee, Katheryn Winnick and Tom Taylor, The Dark Tower opens on February 17, 2017. 

Amon Warmann
Amon Warmann

Amon is a contributing editor and columnist for Empire magazine, but is also a Film and TV writer for GamesRadar+, Total Film, and others. He has also written for NME, Composer Mag, and more, along with being a film critic for TalkSport. He is also the co-host of the Fade to Black Podcast, and a video mashup creator. Can also do a pretty good Bane impersonation.