Offer Out to Javier Bardem to Topline The Dark Tower
Javier Bardem is having one helluva week! Along with being nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for Biutiful and becoming a new dad to a bouncing baby boy (mom is Penelope Cruz), he’s been named as the number one pick to portray gunslinger Roland Deschain in Ron Howard’s The Dark Tower with an offer officially being made by director Howard and Universal Pictures.
Here’s the skinny according to Deadline: While formal negotiations haven’t yet begun, there’s a high level of enthusiasm internally that they’ve got their cowboy. Deschain is the last living member of a knightly order of gunslingers and humanity’s last hope to save a civilization that will fall unless he finds the Dark Tower.
Akiva Goldsman has scripted the first movie and will write the TV component as well. Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer is producing with Goldsman and the author [Stephen King]. Universal is financing and distributing the films, and NBC Universal Television Entertainment is backing the TV component, which will either be a limited run series or a miniseries. Imagine’s Erica Huggins will be executive producer with Kerry Foster of Weed Road.
Howard plans at this point to direct the initial film as well as the TV component that will create a bridge to the second feature. The plan calls for the original actors to headline the TV version as well. The second film will pick up where the first left off. That would be followed by [another] TV installment that would be a prequel that introduces Deschain as a young man. The third film brings back the original cast once again [to] complete the screen trilogy. So if Bardem closes a deal, he’ll likely appear in all three films and that first TV stint.
Whew! Quite a commitment, but now that he’s got another mouth to feed, a little extra job security can only be a good thing, right?
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