Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. The Dark Tower casting news keeps on trucking. Deadline has the newest tidbit, concerning a minor character from the third book, a young man named Timmy who was a friend of Jake's in our world (before Jake crossed over to Roland's world).
Michael Barbieri, co-star of Sundance flick LITTLE MEN, looks to be joining the film down in South Africa.
The more casting falls into place and the more I hear from various sources, it seems that Ander Thomas Jensen and Nikolaj Arcel's biggest changes to the Goldsman/Pinkner draft is adding more stuff with Jake before his cross over into Roland's world.
The reason you're getting a lot of these bit players from later novels cast in this first movie is they're looking to bookend imagery and characters. Devar Toi factors into the events of this movie (hence all the people from books 5-7 being cast) and it sounds like they're sticking to the Goldsman/Pinkner decision to incorporate Jake's journey to Mid-World from The Wastelands into this one.
I'm sure that sounds super confusing to non-fans. Here's the simple version. In The Gunslinger book Jake is already in Roland's world, but is hazy on how he got there. Some shit happens I won't spoil if you don't know, but Jake needs to return to Mid-World in Book 3. That journey is crazy, filled with a literal monster house barring his entry. That stuff is what's going to be in this first Dark Tower movie. We'll spend time with him in New York, feel his draw to the quest for the Tower and all the while he'll be pursued by the Man in Black because he has something that could help the bad guys destroy the Dark Tower.
I know fans are losing their minds right now because it seems every character from other books are showing up and some from the first book are no where to be seen. It's a shuffle, but not one that necessarily spells doom and gloom for this adaptation.
I see the reasoning behind some of these choices, but ultimately it'll be up to the movie to make it feel like a cohesive story instead of a buffet style picking of characters and moments from all the books. I hope they do it right because I'd hate to see a shitty movie of one of my favorite book series, but we won't know until next year.
Thoughts?
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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