I'm fairly certain almost everyone loved yesterday's news about Aaron Paul meeting with Ron Howard for THE DARK TOWER. He'd be perfect as Eddie Dean in my opinion, and like most of you, I was just happy to read something good about the difficult project. After the news surfaced, Schmoes Know decided to do some digging, and they may have found out what's going on with THE DARK TOWER.
The big news item is the one in the headline: Liam Neeson might be interested in THE DARK TOWER. Their source doesn't say who Neeson might like to play, but the site speculates it could be Roland Deschain, The Gunslinger himself. Nesson would make a fine Roland, however there are a couple of other actors I'd rather see as the character. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Liam Neeson, but I think Guy Pearce or Timothy Olyphant would be phenomenal as Roland.
Schmoes Know's source also revealed some details about the budget for THE DARK TOWER, and how it might also be a television series, an option that has been considered a couple of times for the project.
"Ron Howard is going to make this with MRC and Imagine for around 60 million or so. And he’s likely doing this next. There’s going to be a TV series as well since it’s MRC and I’m thinking it may end up being at Netflix."
"$60 million?! That's it??" is what you might be saying to yourself, but if you've read the Stephen King series, you know that things aren't too crazy in the first novel, so having a budget that low might not have a negative impact on the film. Maybe they want to see how well the first one does before sinking a ton of money into the project. Once they get into the other books though, they're definitely going to need to increase the size of the budget.
Granted we have no way of knowing if this is true or not at this time, but does any of this sound good to you guys? Do you want Liam Neeson to be Roland, or is there another actor you have in mind for the character? Should the focus only be on the movies, or do you think having a television series as well is a good thing? Sound off below with your opinion on Ron Howard's THE DARK TOWER!