Will Hollywood ever scale King’s Dark Tower?

Stephen King’s sprawling fantasy saga The Dark Tower has been languishing in development hell for the better part of a decade now, passed along from studio to studio like a cursed object from one of the author’s myriad horror novels, leaving nothing but bloated budgets and devastated dreams in its wake. Last week, however, Sony Pictures announced its intention to finally bring King’s self-described magnum opus to life onscreen.

Sony, along with its producing partner Media Rights Capital, hopes to turn the eight-book series, which has sold a combined 30 million copies worldwide since the first installment hit shelves in 1982, into a multimedia franchise that will encompass both theatrical releases and a high-end television show similar in tone and scale to HBO’s Game of Thrones. Sony will be working alongside producer Brian Grazer and USC alumnus Ron Howard, both of whom have been attached to the project for years, and screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner, whose 2010 draft received praise from King himself. No announcements have been made regarding a director or potential cast members, but the Internet is already ablaze with conjecture.

The announcement represents the possible culmination of decades of waiting for fans of the series, a genre-bending epic that follows Roland Deschain, the last surviving member of an order of knights known as gunslingers, and his quest for the eponymous Dark Tower, a fabled structure said to serve as the supernatural linchpin of time and space. King drew on a variety of sources, including Arthurian legend, the Wagnerian extravaganzas of J.R.R. Tolkien and the blood-spattered spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, in order to create Mid-World, an alternate dimension resembling a magic-infused Old West. In the increasingly meta later novels, Roland’s story effectively became the nexus of King’s literary multiverse, bringing in dozens of characters and settings from his other books. The author himself even pops up as a character in Song of Susannah, the sixth part of the saga.

So what actors would be most well-suited to populate King’s world of macabre mysticism? One of the previous attempts to adapt the series actually had a few solid ideas. After another movie/TV combo deal involving Universal and J.J. Abrams fell through in 2011, Howard, who was then planning to direct the film adaptation himself, began shopping the property to Warner Bros. and HBO. Javier Bardem was at one point nearly cast as the noble, stoic Roland, and Breaking Bad actor Aaron Paul was rumored to be circling the role of Eddie Dean, a quick-witted heroin junkie-turned-gunslinger who joins Roland’s ka-tet, or band of adventurers. Eventually Bardem lost interest, however, and the studio began courting Russell Crowe instead, who remained attached until Warner Bros. pulled its support in the fall of 2012.

If he could be lured back to the project, Bardem has the makings of an excellent Roland. Even though he’s been largely typecast as villains in his English-speaking roles thanks to memorably menacing turns as the monstrous assassin Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men and the vengeful ex-spy Silva in Skyfall, the Spanish actor is an incredibly soulful performer who could easily convey the character’s world-weary grace. Crowe would have been an inspired choice around his Gladiator heyday, but he’s arguably aged out of the part by now.

Paul, who has struggled to find another meaningful role since the end of Breaking Bad, would likewise make for a worthy Eddie, but the actor has reportedly sworn off playing drug addicts, at least for the time being. Eddie is essentially a super-powered Jesse Pinkman, so perhaps that casting idea was too on-the-nose anyway. Ben Foster, the twitchy character actor best known for enlivening Lone Survivor and the 3:10 to Yuma remake, would certainly do in a pinch. 12 Years A Slave star Lupita Nyong’o would be the ideal pick to pull off Susannah, Eddie’s troubled wife, who suffers from dissociative identity disorder.

What about the villains, you ask? The Dark Tower series is chock full of memorable heavies, including a genocidal would-be god known as the Crimson King — something tells me King must be a big progressive rock fan — and his diabolical emissary Randall Flagg, better known by his Johnny Cash-approved moniker The Man in Black. The Crimson King could be played by any of the usual envoys of stately dread — Malcolm McDowell, Ian McDiarmid and Jeremy Irons all spring to mind — but the casting of Flagg is another matter entirely.

A silver-tongued sorcerer who also appears in the non-Dark Tower novels The Stand and Eyes of the Dragon, Flagg is often described as the ultimate embodiment of evil in King’s fiction, a chaotic force of nature hell-bent on bringing down entire civilizations by sowing the seeds of discord and fanaticism with an easy smile and a folksy attitude. Matthew McConaughey is rumored to be playing Flagg in the upcoming big screen version of The Stand, so it would only make sense to have him reprise the role in the Dark Tower movies. He certainly possesses the requisite combination of charisma and intensity, and as anyone who’s seen True Detective or the underrated gem Frailty can tell you, he can definitely play unhinged. Alternatives might include Christian Bale, Guy Pearce or Viggo Mortensen.

If the film and television adaptations are undertaken simultaneously, The Dark Tower could prove to be a truly groundbreaking work of multimedia storytelling, one with the potential to finally bridge the gap between cinematic spectacle and the character-driven virtues of television’s long-form narrative model. Sony and its partners seem ready, willing and able to assume the risk. If they’re able to attract a great director such as Guillermo del Toro, Frank Darabont or Alejandro Jodorowsky to act as a guiding light for the franchise, so much the better. In the end, though, it will be up to audiences to decide whether or not to make the climb.

Landon McDonald is a graduate student studying public relations. His column, “Screen Break,” runs Fridays.