Loosely based on Stephen King's novel series of the same name, the film stars Idris Elba as Roland Deschain, a gunslinger on a quest to protect the Dark Tower—a mythical structure which supports all realities—while Matthew McConaughey plays his nemesis Walter Padick (The Man in Black), and Tom Taylor stars as Jake Chambers, a boy who becomes Roland's apprentice.

[5] Intended as the first installment in a multimedia franchise, the film combines various elements from the eight-novel series, mostly from the first and third volumes, and takes place in both modern-day New York City and in Mid-World, Roland's Old West-style parallel universe.

[11][12][13][14][15] Eleven-year-old Jake Chambers experiences visions involving a mysterious warlock, the Man in Black, who seeks to destroy a Tower and bring ruin to the Universe while a Gunslinger opposes him.

Jake's visions are dismissed by his mother, stepfather and psychiatrists as nightmares resulting from the trauma of his father's death the previous year.

Jake finds an abandoned house from one of his visions where he discovers a high-tech portal that leads to a post-apocalyptic landscape called Mid-World.

Roland is pursuing Walter Padick who has also appeared in Jake's dreams, seeking to kill him as revenge for the murder of his father, Steven, and other fallen Gunslingers.

He explains to Jake that for decades, Walter has been abducting children with psychic powers, attempting to use their "shine"[16] to bring down the Dark Tower, a fabled structure located at the center of the Universe.

Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, who co-created Lost with Abrams, optioned The Dark Tower from King for a reported amount of $19, a number that mysteriously recurs throughout the series.

[19] According to issue #923 of Entertainment Weekly, King "is an ardent supporter of [Lost] and trusts Abrams to translate his vision" into a film franchise, with Lindelof being "the leading candidate to write the screenplay for the first installment.

"[21] A year later, in February 2008, Abrams reiterated that The Dark Tower adaptation was in the early stages of development, when interviewed by Reelz Channel.

[22] When interviewed by AMC in September 2008, Abrams admitted that the project needs time he does not have because of Lost, especially since he would like to see a seven-film series (the eighth novel was published in 2012).

[23] Speaking to MTV News around the same time, Lindelof revealed some apprehension regarding the project, noting that his "reverence for Stephen King is now getting in the way of what any good writer would do first when they're adapting a book, which is take creative license.

"[24] In a July 2009 interview with C21 Media, Lindelof revealed that he and Cuse had indeed optioned the rights for The Dark Tower, but said he was wary about committing to such an ambitious project: "The idea of taking on something that massive again after having done six seasons of Lost is intimidating and slightly frightening, to say the least.

The involved parties included Akiva Goldsman writing the script, Ron Howard directing, and also producing with Brian Grazer and Stephen King.

However, just a month later, a report in Variety revealed that Universal may seek another studio's help, as the project's budget appeared to be more than they were willing to handle.

[48] On April 10, 2015, it was announced that Sony Pictures Entertainment with MRC were fast-tracking the project, now with a completely reworked script by Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner.

[55] On March 1, 2016, Entertainment Weekly confirmed the casting of Idris Elba as Roland and Matthew McConaughey as The Man in Black, with shooting set to begin in South Africa in April.

[65] In late March 2017, the film was pushed back one week from July 28, 2017, to August 4, 2017, switching places with Sony Pictures Animation's The Emoji Movie.

[67] A one-minute television spot titled Connected KINGdom featured Easter eggs (media) of other Stephen King stories through the inter-dimensional setting of the titular location, the Dark Tower.

[73] Critics panned The Dark Tower, calling it "boring and flavorless" and "incomprehensible to newbies and wildly unfaithful and simplistic to fans of King's books.

[71] TheWrap's Dan Callahan was critical of the film's sloppiness and poor editing by saying, "The 95-minute culmination of years-long efforts to bring The Dark Tower to the big screen is a complete disaster, a limp, barely coherent shell of a movie.

[80]Peter Travers of Rolling Stone described the film as a "major misfire" and an "unholy mess that shouldn't happen to a King, much less a paying customer".

[84] However, he also defended the film, claiming that screenwriter Goldsman "did a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie".

[85] In an appearance on Josh Horowitz's podcast Happy Sad Confused promoting his film Pavarotti, Howard admitted to being dissatisfied with The Dark Tower.

Believing that the film was not faithful to its source material due to lacking the novels' horror elements and by presenting the story as a "boy's own adventure" with Jake as the protagonist instead of Roland, he elaborated that "We always felt like we were kind of holding back something, and I think at the end of the day it was that".

Explaining that these deviations from the books were "a sense of maybe too much listening to what you think the marketplace is calling for instead of really the essence of what Stephen King was giving us", Howard also expressed that the adaptation might have been more successful had it been made as a television series rather than a film.

[86] While discussing the future of the franchise with The Hollywood Reporter interviewer James Hibberd, Goldsman said that "I have a lot of regret about the parts of that that didn't work out.

[90] At that time, there were still discussions in play regarding a possible television series, on Amazon, as a way to move forward with adaptations of the Dark Tower novels.

[85] In February 2018, Amazon bought the rights to the series adaptation, though it was not made clear at first if Elba, Taylor or McConaughey would be involved.

[94] It was later confirmed that the series would serve as a reboot with Sam Strike and Jasper Pääkkönen being cast as Roland Deschain and The Man in Black respectively.