The saga of Ron Howard, Akiva Goldsman, Erica Huggins and Brian Grazer’s attempt to put Stephen King’s sprawling Dark Tower stories onto screens has been a fraught one, full of excited announcements and disappointed cancellations. But with Sony on board for a film, things are on the upswing again. And it appears the producers are zeroing in on a director for the film, with A Royal Affair’s Nikolaj Arcel the prime choice.
According to Deadline, it’s far from a done deal, as Arcel is simply who Sony and the producers want to re-write and direct the film. But if he does sign a contract, he might finally be the man to make the movie. And it appears the Danish filmmaker is a huge fan of Stephen King’s work, learning to read and speak English so he could buy the books in their original language, something that impressed the production team and the studio.
Goldsman and co-writer Jeff Pinker have been spending time writing a new draft of the film, trimming the budget and streamlining the story so it could launch a series of films without worrying about an accompanying TV series, and now things finally might be moving forward, even if we won’t count on anything just yet.
Arcel has several other projects in development, including a new adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, a film based on Don Winslow’s mystery novel The Power Of The Dog and another long-gestating project spawned from a series of linked stories, the movie version of Bill Willingham’s Fables.