The tower is always darkest before its release date.

(That’s how that expression goes, right? I was up late last night watching the World Series; my brain’s a little fuzzy.)

Whatever the expression, there’s bad news today for fans of Stephen King and The Dark TowerAccording to Entertainment Weekly and “sources close to the movie,” the movie is getting bumped back from its original release date of February 17 to July 28, 2017.

The news isn’t wildly shocking given the fact that the movie was supposedly due in a little over three months and had yet to release a full trailer. I know when I saw that the film had pulled out of EW’s recent PopFest days before the event, that seemed like a huge red flag. You only bail on something like that if something major is going on behind the scenes; like, say, a release date delay.

According to EW, there are two primary reasons for the delay: “Needing deadline extensions on the visual effects” and giving the studio more time to properly promote the movie, which is supposed to launch an entire franchise as well as a spinoff TV series. Directed by Nikolaj Arcel, The Dark Tower is the first successful attempt to bring King’s epic fantasy series to the screen after decades of false starts and abandoned productions. The screenplay was written by Arcel, Akiva Goldsman, and Anders Thomas Jensen; the cast is headlined by Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. Hopefully the movie actually comes out next July.

 

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