"The Dark Tower" / Sony — “The Dark Tower” / Sony

As Sony Pictures brings Stephen King’s mammoth novel series “The Dark Tower” to the big screen, in a feature film trilogy, a TV series based on the novel franchise is also now in the works.

Announced today (which also happens to be Stephen King’s 69th birthday), Media Rights Capital (MRC) – the production company with the rights to “The Dark Tower” – plans to adapt the fourth book, “Wizard and Glass,” as a spin-off TV series, with a commitment of between 10 and 13 episodes, and a production date start likely in 2017 for release in 2018 (the movie is set for release in theaters on Feb. 17, 2017).

No network is attached yet, but the producers say that a cable network or streaming service (like Netflix, Amazon or Hulu) would be preferably due to the story’s mature/adult content. Since MRC also produces “House of Cards” for Netflix, there’s a chance that “Wizard and Glass” will end up there as well.

Fans will be happy to know that Idris Elba, who stars in the upcoming “The Dark Tower” movie as the gunslinger Roland Deschain, is also attached to appear in the series, as is Tom Taylor, who plays Jake Chambers. Matthew McConaughey, who plays the villainous Man in Black in the film, may appear in the show as well.

“Wizard and Glass” tells the story of a younger Roland Deschain’s exile to his homeworld, his romance with the beautiful Susan Delgado, and the test of the bond with his friends Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns. The actors who will play the young Roland and his friends have not been cast yet. And since Elba is playing the older Roland, and will also appear in the TV series as that character (in visions of young Roland’s future), it’s therefore likely that a young black actor would be cast to play the young Roland; an actor in his teens.

“The Dark Tower’s” director, Nikolaj Arcel, and co-writer, Anders Thomas Jensen, are helping to develop “Wizard and Glass,” but a showrunner will reportedly be brought on eventually. And if the first season is a success, a second season would adapt the Robin Furth-penned Dark Tower comics, which continue the story of young Roland.

The “Dark Tower” series, which King himself considers his magnum opus, is a cross-genre work, including elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror and western, with at least 8 novels in the series, published between 1982 and 2012.

Here’s a general plot summary: In the story, Roland Deschain is the last living member of a knightly order known as gunslingers and the last of the line of “Arthur Eld”, his world’s analogue of King Arthur. Politically organized along the lines of a feudal society, it shares technological and social characteristics with the American Old West but is also magical. Many of the magical aspects have vanished from Mid-World, but traces remain as do relics from a technologically advanced society. Roland’s quest is to find the Dark Tower, a fabled building said to be the nexus of all universes. Roland’s world is said to have “moved on”, and it appears to be coming apart at the seams. Mighty nations have been torn apart by war, entire cities and regions vanish without a trace and time does not flow in an orderly fashion. Even the sun sometimes rises in the north and sets in the east. As the series opens, Roland’s motives, goals and age are unclear, though later installments shed light on these mysteries. Along his journey to the Dark Tower, Roland meets a great number of both friends and enemies. For most of the way he is accompanied by a group of people who together with him form the Ka-tet of the Nineteen and Ninety-nine, consisting of Jake Chambers, Eddie and Susannah Dean, and Oy.

MRC

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