Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey has been offered two of the main roles in The Dark Tower, Hollywood’s long-gestating attempt to bring Stephen King’s self-described fantasy “magnum opus” to the big screen, reports The Wrap. McConaughey would play either gunslinger Roland Deschain or the villainous Man in Black, two of the best known figures in King’s eight-book saga, which is currently being developed by studio Sony after earlier dalliances with Warner Bros and Universal.
Nikolaj Arcel, the acclaimed Danish director of 2012’s A Royal Affair is due to direct a film based on a script by A Beautiful Mind Oscar-winner Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner which largely covers the events depicted in King’s 1982 series opener The Gunslinger.
Producer Ron Howard, the Oscar-winning filmmaker, has been trying to get a project based on The Dark Tower into cinemas since at least 2010. The current template still includes plans for an accompanying TV series, though it is not known whether McConaughey is in line to take on the small screen spin-off as well as its big screen counterpart.
Universal decided to pass on a proposal for three films — Howard had been due to direct the first — and two linked TV series in July 2011. Russell Crowe and Javier Bardem have both previously been linked to the role of Deschain.
A nightmarish jigsaw puzzle of colliding references and motifs, The Dark Tower throws together a bloodthirsty panorama of Sergio Leone-style cowboys, post-apocalyptic mutants, demons and murderers. There are seven books in the original series, with an additional eighth, published in 2012, slotting in between volumes four and five. More than 30m books in the series have been sold in 40 countries.
McConaughey, who won an Oscar for his role as an unlikely AIDS victim in Dallas Buyers Club, is currently eyeing his next project and reportedly has an open slate for 2016. He recently finished filming slavery-themed US civil war drama Free State of Jones for director Gary Ross and the mining drama Gold for Stephen Gaghan. Reports last week suggested McConaughey will voice a “dapper koala” in the animated musical Sing from Son of Rambow’s Garth Jennings.
