Amazon’s pilot of the series adaptation ‘The Dark Tower’ now has its two leads: Jasper Pääkkönen and Sam Strike.
Strike will play Roland Deschain, also known as The Gunslinger.
No stranger to television, Strike has had roles in NBC’s ‘Timeless,’ Syfy’s ‘Nightflyers,’ and Netflix’s ‘Mindhunter.’ Next, he has the HBO miniseries ‘Chernobyl,’ premiering May 6th.
Pääkkönen is believed to be playing The Man in Black, also known as Marten Broadcloak and Randall Flagg.
With the hit History series ‘Vikings,’ Pääkkönen was able to break out in America, after primarily doing Finnish projects. He was recently in Spike Lee’s Academy Award winning ‘BlacKkKlansman,’ and will reunite with Lee for his next film: Netflix’s ‘Da 5 Bloods.’
The logline is below:
“The story of how Roland became a gunslinger and his first encounter with the villainous Man in Black.”
The Stephen King series was originally going to tie in to the 2017 film, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. But, the plan now is for the show to be a more faithful adaptation of the book series.
Glen Mazzara (‘The Walking Dead,’ ‘Damien’) serves as executive producer and showrunner.
Thanks to That Hashtag Show, we know Deschain’s “ka-tet” will comprise of Cuthbert Allgood, Alain Johns, Ileen Ritter and Jamie De Curry in addition to his girlfriend, Susan Delgado. The studio is currently looking at actors and actresses, ages 16-18 for all these roles.
They also gave a bit more details on the plot:
“Marten Broadcloak aka The Man in Black (Pääkkönen) will serve as the series antagonist and his affair with Gabrielle, the mother of Roland Deschain (Strike), will factor heavily into the plot. Her affair incites Roland to pick up his guns in a search for Broadcloak and sets his father, Steven, on a mission to find him.”
Filming will begin mid-April and wrap late June, in Croatia.
The season will comprise of 13 episodes, if all goes well, but no premiere date has been set.
Source: Variety and That Hashtag Show