The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower has largely ceded the spotlight to other Stephen King projects on the horizon, but it seems the proposed TV tie-in may be moving forward. Reports suggest Amazon has landed the rights to develop a Dark Tower series among its burgeoning slate.

2017 was a great year for movies ... most of the time. Here were a few notable, terrible exceptions.

Three new movies debut this weekend!

With two new releases and a third movie switching from a limited to a wide release, this was a weekend of big changes at the box office. Gone are familiar stalwarts like Wonder Woman and Baby Driver, and in its place are (with respect) the also-rans of summer, a few genre-driven films looking to carve out a name for themselves in a time of year devoid of major blockbuster releases. Here are the numbers as of Sunday afternoon:

Let's all go to the drive in!

With movies seemingly getting longer by the second after Michael Bay and his ilk ushered in a new and exhausting runtime era, lights in the bloated darkness can come from the most unexpected of places. The Dark Tower, for example, is only 95 minutes long — for those of you who, like me, don’t understand what that means unless it’s in hours, that equates to an hour and 35 minutes. Which is less than two hours!

The world approaches a great cataclysm in the latest trailer for the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s fantasy novel The Dark Tower, but the specific nature of that cosmic upheaval, I know not what. Not having read the source novel, I’ve decided to go into the film cold when it premieres on August 4, and so far, I’ve done a pretty solid job of keeping myself unsullied by plot revelations. The new international trailer does me a favor, too, by playing all of its details of plot close to the vest. There’s a whole lot of ominous talking, stars Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey appear to have some manner of beef that could decide the fate of the known universe, but beyond that, I’m in the dark (tower).

If you’re a huge Stephen King fan (like me!), then you undoubtedly noticed two fairly huge easter eggs in the first trailer for The Dark Tower, which finally — after months of anticipation and growing concern — debuted online early this morning. Those less familiar with the SKU (the Stephen King Universe) may have missed the pair of references to two of King’s most iconic stories, both of which have also been adapted before.

By this point in a big film’s marketing cycle, we typically would have seen a couple trailers, a ton of posters, lengthy magazine pieces, the works. In contrast, there has been so little concrete info out there on The Dark Tower, which opens in theaters in almost exactly three months, that some people (like, y’know, me) began to doubt whether the movie would open on time, or even if it existed at all.

If you read our summer movie preview yesterday you might have seen The Dark Tower on our list and thought, ‘Wait, what?! That’s coming out in August?’ Yes, your eyeballs will finally see the long awaited Stephen King adaptation in just three months, but the average moviegoer wouldn’t know it from the complete lack of marketing. We haven’t even seen a trailer yet, and last month the release was pushed back a week. But now, finally, we have officially confirmation of the trailer’s arrival.