Perhaps even more surprising than
Ron Howard, a steady American director whose best films were always centered around the framework of men involved in great moments & characters from history (Frost Nixon, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man), being the man to bring possibly the most ambitious project of the new decade, or any decade - a three film and two t.v. series long adaptation of Stephen King's incredibly dense and multi-genre spanning
The Dark Tower seven book series - to life, was the news last week that
Oscar winner Javier Bardem had agreed to play lead Roland Deschain. Once thought to be the kind of long commitment project that could only demand t.v. level actors or those struggling for work, Howard and Universal managed to instead capture the very much in-demand and perhaps the greatest actor working at the peak of his powers today. And very quickly, the world began to take notice. With Bardem seemingly just needing to dot the I's and cross the T's on his lengthy contract, we imagine Universal's talent pool search might have jumped up a notch or two for the other key roles. Suddenly actors they may have previously thought were out of reach might now be reachable. Shooting should begin late this summer, with the first film,
The Gunslinger, due in 2013. But Universal are already looking further ahead with attention this week turning to how the NBC t.v. series will shape up.
Deadline are reporting that
Mark Verheiden will co-write and co-executive produce the series alongside
Akiva Goldsman, the Ron Howard collobrator who has also provided the scripts for the film. As a huge Dark Tower fan, the news that somebody with Verheiden's talent has been brought in to closely work with the man responsible for the scripts of Batman & Robin and Angels & Demons can only be a good thing. Can we suggest he does a once over on the film scripts too?
Verheiden is no stranger to long form narratives having wrote
Superman at DC Comics for years and the t.v. shows
Smallville, Battlestar Galatica and
Heroes - but he has lent his hands to some movies in his time including
Timecop and
My Name is Bruce. Ron Howard is also, at this point at least, due to direct every episode of the t.v. series which will probably screen early 2014. The Dark Tower Part I: The Gunslinger (as we presume it'll be known) is due to hit our screens on May 17th, 2013. Still can't quite believe it, can you?