Earlier today we posted a story which included a mention of how weird it was that The Dark Tower movie would actually be coming out quite soon. Well, we seem to have jinxed it, as it turns out that the big screen tale of Roland and The Man In Black has been pushed from its February release date to the summer.
EW reports that Nikolaj Arcel’s film of Stephen King’s fantasy series of novels, which stars Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey as the gunslinger and his devilish quarry, has been moved to summer 2017.
The reason given for this delay is that the film’s visual effects. As it turns out, there were some concerns about whether they would be completed in time for the February release, and the options were either “to add millions more to the budget to speed up the work, or push to a later date.”
The budget for the movie stands at a surprisingly reasonable $60 million, which given the cost of recent studio tentpoles, seems incredibly modest. A source told ED that “It’s a very fiscally responsible budget, and trying to stay in budget to make money and stay profitable means the VFX won’t be finished in time [for February]. “Now that there’s more time, they’re not paying rush charges to get the effects where they need to be.”
The site also points out that the delay gives them a lot more time to work on the film’s marketing. Outside of a leaked trailer with unfinished effects, there’s been very little seen from The Dark Tower. Not even a teaser, or a teaser poster (although there were some stills and an EW cover, we’ll give it that. We would like a trailer, though).
The cast for the film also includes Jackie Earle Hayley (Watchmen, Preacher) as vampire Sayre, Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Neon Demon) as Tirana, Tom Taylor as Jake Chambers, Fran Kranz (Cabin In The Woods, Bloodsucking Bosses) as Pimli and Claudia Kim (Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Marco Polo) as Arra Champignon. Arcel wrote the script with Akiva Goldsman and Anders Thomas Jensen.
The Dark Tower will be released in summer 2017. Keep up with the latest genre news with the new issue of SciFiNow.
