Those of you who saw Sony‘s The Dark Tower this weekend probably walked out with a lot of questions. If you’re a fan of Stephen King’s sprawling book series, then you probably were doubly confused by the fact that Matthew McConaughey’s Man in Black seemingly bites the dust, despite being the arch villain of the whole series. What is Roland and Jake’s goal now that the attacks against the Tower have been thwarted? We chatted with director Nikolaj Arcel about The Dark Tower ending, as well as what lies in store for Roland in a potential sequel.
ComingSoon.net: I wanted to get a little bit more into spoiler territory: I was a little shocked because I’m so used to a big first movie in a franchise coming out and having it be all setup. Even though you can obviously go on and tell more stories, it feels like when you killed the Man in Black that there’s a finality to that.
Nikolaj Arcel: Or did we?
CS: Or did you? Yeah, I know. He really can’t be killed, can he?
Arcel: We are going into spoiler territory. I think it’s fair to say that the Man in Black will return, yeah. He’s the main, he’s THE villain. If we had really wanted to kill him off for good, it would’ve been a bigger moment, and I think it was almost like, “Did he die? Did he not?” I don’t know. For me, he certainly didn’t. He is in the later installments of the novels, so yeah.
CS: Sure. That is one of the big main items on Roland’s to-do list, to kill him.
Arcel: Oh yeah.
CS: But where do Roland and Jake go from here?
Arcel: I can’t spoil too much, but I can tell you that you can probably find a lot of that answer in book two, “The Drawing of the Three.” So that’s the best I can do.
CS: Okay then. Also, I was a little sad that Jackie Earle Haley’s Sayer didn’t have a bigger role. Again, it seemed like his character kind of came and got killed pretty quickly, but is he intended to have a bigger role down the line? Or was it just a small part?
Arcel: I think there is a possible future for him. We don’t see him actually die, right? But I think he’s definitely one of those characters that I felt wasn’t a big character in the script, but Jackie, I’ve always loved his work. I just told him, “Listen, it’s not a huge part, but it’s important, you know, a seriously important character.” And he was so game. He was cool. He was just like, “Yeah, I love the character, so let me do it.” But you never know what can happen.
CS: Is there more stuff on the cutting room floor?
Arcel: I think there’s like, five or six little scenes, but they’re all going to be on the DVD, on the deleted scenes. I think the fat cut or whatever it’s called was maybe 10 or 12 minutes longer or something like that. But that’s very usual. I mean, I’ve had early cuts that were like, a half an hour longer or something. So this was always kind of tight, yeah.
Did you like or dislike The Dark Tower ending? Where do you want to see Roland and Jake go in the sequels? Let us know in the comments below!
