Inclusion in film & tv casting

No. No. No. No. Frank Darabond is the ONLY one who can do King’s stuff right.

George Romero…that would have been interesting.

King himself few years ago mentioned Clint Eastwood as the figure he used to create the Gunslinger. casting anyone who doesn’t look like a young(ish) Clint for that role is a real shame.

I Liked Elba a lot in the movies I watched with him as a main character, he’s a really cool actor. If they picked Jackie Chan for the role of the Gunslinger, I’d have exactly the same complaint about the terrible casting.

I don’t know how much money Elba made from the movie, but I guess if was a stack of cash no one would have turned down. What I meant is that the casting was made controversial on purpose to create free advertisement, following the steps of Ghostbusters with all the websites that spent months writing nonsense like:“If you don’t like this movie it’s because you’re sexist”. Luckily the:“If you didn’t like The Dark Tower you’re racist!” didn’t last long because TDT is not as popular to the general public as the Ghostbusters franchise, so the modie generated very little interest among non-readers and the readers were disappointed.

Actually, Frank Darabont would probably be even better.:wink:

Seriously, after his whole debacle with The Boring Dead, he might be unemployable for a while…

dean cain is mixed isn’t he?

He said so in the intros he wrote. I never read it as meaning he looked like Clint or was Clint. From reading the books themselves he was definitely never Clint to me. Not even close.

I don’t know how much money Elba made from the movie, but I guess if was a stack of cash no one would have turned down. What I meant is that the casting was made controversial on purpose to create free advertisement,

I highly doubt it. What’s your evidence? King was involved in the whole thing, and the books were his baby. I doubt he’d even remotely care about that. Also, most fans of the book would definitely be signing up to watch the movie no matter who was cast. Controversy wasn’t going to attract them. Moviegoers at large would have no idea about any such controversy and wouldn’t be affected.

Mixed alien???!!

Awesome!!!

Well, people with the evidence would be those in the meeting room when they decided how to handle the casting, and I wasn’t one of them.
It’s just my idea that they selected a popular actor that doesn’t match the description of the Gunslinger at all because they trying to get some free publicity, trying to mimic the new Ghostbusters media circus. With TDT being a more niche product, there wasn’t enough media coverage to push people into going to the cinema out of:“I’m not a racist, so I should watch this movie!”. Plenty of people who didn;t care about Ghostbusters at all went to watch it just becaue of all the feminist nonsense around the movie.

Right, you have no evidence to support your idea. It looks to me like you’re basing it on a preconception and ignoring the obvious possibility that they didn’t care about his race and simply thought he was the best guy for the role, an idea for which I have given some support. We’re not talking about some kind of cultural icon here–it’s a minor literary character and his race is really irrelevant. I read an interview a while back where King talks about it–I’ll see if I can dig it up.

You’re missing the point here.

How could Elba be that good…if he’s a black???

Similarly, the Ghostbusters reboot had to be made just to take advantage of male guilt. How could it legitimately be any good…with women in it??

No, because I don’t make it just a race thing. Elba doesn’t match the description of the Gunslinger at all, and it’s not just for the skin color. The Gunslinger shouldn’t be a tough, muscular guy with well trimmed hair and clean clothes. He’s supposed to be the opposite of that. Do you think there were no tall, slim, non-muscular guys without trimmed hair in Hollywood who would have been a better match for the role? Elba only matches the Gunslinger description for gender and age, that’s a REALLY LOW standard for the casting of an iconic character.

I don’t really care about King giving an interview justifying their casting decision for the movie decades after the books were set in stone and had a clear description of all the characters.

@Rocket

I’ve already mentioned that I consider Elba a good actor, as well as some (#notall) of the actresses in ghostbusters. The gender-swapping of Ghostbusters netted Sony 100 million$ losses because it was a shitty movie whose producers and director hoped that a full women cast would have been enough to make some $$$. TDT is performing poorly in theaters and has terrible review online because the casting was fucked up and the movie is an empty sheel of its written counterpart.

Yep

I’m outraged!!!

Hi,

Casting for a movie isn’t necessarily based on the closest match to an image of a character from a book. The main consideration could well be what will work in the context of a film. They could always put some dirty clothes on him and a wig lol. I thought of Roland as fastidious myself though. Again, I never thought Elba was the right guy for the role. But I still have that picture of The Wire character in my head for him and that’s it. For me, he didn’t match how I perceived Roland. So on that level I agree with you. I don’t agree with the other stuff you’re saying–I just think they picked who they wanted for the role.

I don’t think the character is “iconic”, by any means.

That seems silly. He was involved in the development process–what if he was directly involved in the casting decision? It’s his book and his character lol. His visual image is largely subjective. I don’t understand this at all.

So for 30 years he wrote books describing a character in a certain way, and suddenly out of nowhere he decides:“You know what…this guy, who has nothing in common with the character I wrote about for 30+ years, might be the perfect match!”. Yeah nah, not buying that.

Why? What does he care? You think he needs some extra bucks from some cheap controversy that no one except those who are familiar with the books and and virtually certain to go see it anyway might care about? Not buying that.

The idea is that people who read the books would watch the movie anyway (and be disappointed), while people who aren’t familiar/interested about the lore may end up hearing about some of the controversy and end up watching it. It happened with Ghostbusters, and considering how long this discussion has been going there definitely seem to be people interested in defending a terrible casting option because of reasons.

Where’s the controversy then? It’s non-existent, much like the reasoning behind this theory :slight_smile: My base assumption is that King cared about his character and books more than that. He goes on about it in some detail in that intro to the books. You’d have to show me more than a casting decision you don’t agree with to make me think otherwise.

Ghostbusters WAS a very popular movie that everyone and their grandmother saw. I’m not sure exactly what you’re asserting but the comparison fails on that basis alone. Ask most people on the street before this movie–probably even now–and they wouldn’t have known what Dark Tower was.

Anyway, it may well have been a terrible casting decision, but you seem to be saying it was something more than that, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Ghostbusters is very popular but there hasn’t been anything for years. Sony pushed a feminist agenda (deleting legit comments about how bad the trailer and movie were, and keeping only the sexist ones) in order to gain media attention and create some drama + free advertisemente for the movie. It kinda worked, in the sensy that even people who didn’t really care about the movie ended up watching it out of curiosity or because:“I don’t hate women, so I need to watch it! That will put those sexists in place!”. The movie still bombed because it was garbage.

TDT has a much smaller audience in terms of possible cinema-goers. Casting Elba was a cheap way for them to try and generate more media attention and advertisement for the movie. Unfortunately for them (and luckily for us) the media didn’t focus too much on this movie, even though there were some articles here and there mentioning HOW BRAVE the choice of Elba was, and how PERFECT he is for the role. Eventually, TDT will be remembered as a shitty movie with really bad casting, which is fine by me even though I liked the books because I prefer non-shitty movies with good casting.

Here’s an interview from May 2016

http://movieweb.com/dark-tower-movie-story-changes-stephen-king/

“I’ve been following his career for a long time, and when we started talking, for me, it just clicked.”

That sounds to me like he was involved in the decision. Maybe the reason is that King just liked him, and not that he was willing to sabotage years of work for a cheap gimmick.

What were you expecting him to say?

“Yeah well the casting was shit and didn’t match what i’ve been writing for 30+ years, but you know, corporations”.