First Official Look At Idris Elba And Matthew McConaughey In The Dark Tower

07/14/2016 10:24 am EDT

Columbia Pictures has released the first official image of stars Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey as Roland the Gunslinger and the Man in Black, respectively, in The Dark Tower. The film is an adaptation of Stephen King's eight-novel fantasy saga. Elba and McConaughey appear on the cover of Entertainment Weekly's San Diego Comic-Con issue.

The Dark Tower finds Roland the Gunslinger pursuing the Man in Black, who plans to create chaos and rule over it beside a villain called the Crimson King. Much of the story takes place on Mid-World, a post-apocalyptic landscape that is only one of many worlds. While the apocalypse has already done its thing on Mid-World, the apocalypse is still coming for the world we live on.

Inspired by The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King began his own fantasy epic in 1982 with The Gunslinger. A sequel, The Drawing of the Three, followed five years later. Further novels in the series – The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, Wolves of Calla, Song of Susannah - were released sporadically over the next two decades until the story came to a conclusion in The Dark Tower in 2012. King released an additional novel, The Wind Through the Keyhole, in 2012.

Marvel Comics began adapted the series into comics in 2007 with The Gunslinger Born. Since then they've released The Long Road Home, Treachery, The Sorcerer, The Fall of Gilead, Battle of Jericho Hill, and The Gunslinger – The Journey Begins. Marvel's most recent series is The Drawing of the Three.

Check out when The Dark Tower and other movies are coming out in ComicBook.com's Movie Release Schedule.

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