Amazon’s quest to Mid-World has officially begun.
While the online giant is currently developing a spinoff series for The Lord of the Rings, earlier this week it was announced that The Dark Tower TV show has begun filming. Not only that, but Michael Rooker, star of The Walking Dead and Guardians of the Galaxy, will frontline the sci-fi drama in an undisclosed role.
Word is Amazon has set up shop in Croatia, where a pilot episode is being filmed on location. We may well be lucky enough to see one or two set photos emerge over the coming days, in which case we may be able to deduce who, exactly, Rooker is playing. Could it be Eldred Jonas, leader of the Big Coffin Hunters gang? All we know for sure is that this version of The Dark Tower is much more faithful to the Stephen King opus, as Deadline recently confirmed:
The Dark Tower TV series is independent from the film and is meant to be a more faithful retelling of the book than the movie was. I hear it will take place many years before the events depicted in the film, and will focus on Roland Deschain’s (Strike) origin story– how he first became a gunslinger and got his guns, his first conflict with the man in black, his first love and his first mission as a gunslinger.
Two years ago, Sony Pictures promised a big-screen adaptation for the ages, but in reality, The Dark Tower of 2017 was a befuddling mess with no real sense of drama. It’ll no doubt be remembered as a missed opportunity, given the fact that Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey were cast as Roland Deschain and the Man in Black, respectively. This time around, we have Rooker, along with Jerome Flynn and Jasper Pääkkönen (BlacKkKlansman) as the Man in Black.
Amazon’s Dark Tower TV series has begun shooting in Croatia with Michael Rooker in tow. And we’ll be bringing you all the latest as this project develops.