MTV cornered producer Brian Grazer at the Oscars and badgered him for more information on he and director Ron Howard‘s über-ambitious, multi-platform adaptation of Stephen King‘s granddaddy epic The Dark Tower.
Who will play Roland of Gilead, the last gunslinger of a parallel world strangely like our own? Our initial speculation had Viggo Mortensen, Daniel Craig, Jon Hamm and Hugh Jackman in the running for the lead. Soon after that, Javier Bardem joined the race and subsequently became the frontrunner.
Grazer offered the following updates to rabid fans of the series who await the promised film trilogy, (augmented by two television series) with a mixture of hope, skepticism and contained excitement:
“Javier Bardem, that’s what we’re hoping,” Grazer said when I asked him for an update. “We’re in the process of trying to put that together. Will that make you happy?”
“He’s locked in psychologically,” Grazer said. “He really wants to do it, so we’re absolutely rooting for him to do it.”
When asked to address other potential cast members, Grazer said they’re too busy with Bardem.
“We’re really just focused on Javier right now,” he said.
Happy is a relative term. As a long-time fan of the Dark Tower saga (which not only encompasses seven novels and a novella but spills over into many, many other King stories), I was initially uncertain about Bardem in the role. The more I consider it, the more it makes sense. The character of Roland Deschain is almost humorless, completely capable, and a secret romantic. Bardem can be scarily single-minded (his vicious killer in No Country For Old Men) and sweetly, almost naively romantic (his seemingly carefree artist in Vicky Cristina Barcelona).
I think he can do it. A lot of Dark Tower fans will be on the fence about this until the first frames of the first movie appear, but they’ll come around.
Are you a Dark Tower fan? Can you see Javier Bardem in the lead role?