It’s learned Sony’s planned film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series of novels now has a director with Nikolaj Arcel.
Deadline confirms the news noting Arcel will go right to work on the project and has brought in fellow Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen to work together on a rewrite of the script, the last draft of which was written by Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner.
Nikolah Arcel is known for directing the Oscar-nominated film A Royal Affair, and also is the co-writer of the Swedish version of the Stieg Larsson novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. He also just turned in a script to Warner Bro.s about Robert Kennedy that Matt Damon will star in.
Anders Thomas Jensen is known for his Oscar award-winning short film Election Night.
It’s also reported this is the first in a series of Dark Tower stories being developed, and Sony is also planning on a complimentary TV series.
The first novel of King’s series is titled The Gunslinger, described at Amazon as:
This heroic fantasy is set in a world of ominous landscape and macabre menace that is a dark mirror of our own. A spellbinding tale of good versus evil, it features one of Stephen King’s most powerful creations—The Gunslinger, a haunting figure who embodies the qualities of the lone hero through the ages, from ancient myth to frontier western legend.
The Gunslinger’s quest involves the pursuit of The Man in Black, a liaison with the sexually ravenous Alice, and a friendship with the kid from Earth called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, here is stunning proof of Stephen King’s storytelling sorcery.
