Stephen King's Dark Tower TV Show Still Happening, First cast Announced

While it's not unusual for a popular novel to get more than one adaptation, it's rare for them to occur only a few years apart. But following the commercial disappointment of 2017's adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, another version is on the way, this time as an Amazon series. The first cast members have now been announced.

As reported by Variety, the lead roles of The Gunslinger and The Man in Black will be played by Sam Strike and Jasper Pääkkönen respectively. Strike was seen most recently in the sci-fi show Nightflyers, as well as David Fincher's Netflix thriller Mindhunter. Pääkkönen had a key role in Spike Lee's acclaimed Blackkkansman, as well as the series Vikings.

A Dark Tower TV show was first announced back in 2016. It was subsequently announced that former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara would be producing the series, and the plan was to make it a spin-off from the film. The movie, which starred Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, hit theaters in August 2017, but its box office failure meant that plans for further movies were quickly dropped.

However, development on the show continued, with Mazzara remaining on board. As Variety notes, the series will now be a "more faithful adaptation" of the source material. King himself commented on this back in October 2017, when he stated the show would be "complete reboot" of the property. "The TV series they’re developing now... we'll see what happens with that," he said at the time. "It would be like a complete reboot, so we'll just have to see."

The Dark Tower encompasses eight novels, written between 1982 and 2012. The books blend classic western themes with horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, and many of King's other novels connect to the ongoing story.