Jake Chambers Casting Rumors

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for the Dark Tower. Just days after the announcement that Idris Elba will play the lead role, Variety are claiming that the role of Jake Chambers will be taken up by the mostly unknown youngster, Tom Taylor (BBC’s Doctor Foster).

If you thought the casting for the Dark Tower was becoming a bit strange (first casting a Brit in the lead role), then certainly casting another Brit in the role of a New York kid is probably the strangest news yet! Maybe the recent invasion of British actors into big budget productions such as Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has the DT folks thinking it’ll work for this movie too. Who knows, though I’m not convinced myself.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for more British actors appearing in big budget Hollywood movies – heck, I’m a brit myself – but really, a British Jake Chambers!?!

Let’s just hope they can hook Taylor up with a miracle working voice coach, and hope too that the kid actually has the talent talk American.

For now this is still just a rumor – and we’ve had plenty of those over the years – so until Mr. King sends us a tweet, we’ll have to take it for what it is.

The Variety article doesn’t really say much about this news, but if you’re interested you can read it here.

If you’re interested in knowing what Tom Taylor looks like, Entertainment Weekly has a good photo.

Entertainment Weekly photo of Tom Taylor

3 responses

Roland definitely was not black. None of the gunslingers were. It was a surprise to the people rivercrossing to see susannah. Ive waited too long for this. Dont fuck it up.

Brendon Shields – April 29th, 2016
Don’t care if they are Brits, Swedes, or Australians. Anyone can adopt a different accent. Just keep them somewhere close to the description of the characters in the books. As stated above, race is a specific factor in many of the parts of this book. It’s set in a classic Western setting within a Sci-Fi. Don’t be racist. But please recognize that people are different races.

Jesse Barondeau – May 15th, 2016
I somehow only heard the past two days that The Dark Tower film was underway and filming, after all the previous delays and issues. I’m delighted to hear it, and all, but I have to say, I am a bit surprised that we now have a black Roland. I mean, I do not intend this to be racist in ANY way, I’m just saying, I’ve been a King fan from day one, and a Dark Tower fan from Day One, particularly the earlier books in the series, and this casting just doesn’t fit with my own mental image of Roland from the books, period. Or the milieu and world that he hails from. I’m sure Edris is a wonderful actor and have heard that he is, and I’m also sure Matt will kick butt as Randall Flagg, without a doubt. I just despair a bit at having too many people in Hollywood tamper with, and alter the original books and property so drastically with this type of major change to a major character (THE major character). I don’t mean that a black or non-white Roland couldn’t be great, maybe he could, but I’m talking about messing too much with the original as it stands. That’s all I’m saying. It distresses me because I mean this in the broader sense of Hollywood usually makes a mess out of classics like this. And it’s nonsense that you can’t be faithful to a novel, or novels. It’s been done. It can be done. Although yes, in this case, we have a large number of books and stories in the series to somehow get through if it’s ever to be more than just a film or two of the first two or three novels. I also cannot stand the idea of in-between TV miniseries tie-ins since they almost always ROT, ok? Let’s get real here. Salem’s Lot 1979 was a rare, rare, exception, especially for a King property.
I don’t mean to get into a whole debate, but reading of these casting and filming in NYC revelations today, I was a bit taken aback. I pray this will be great, but I just already have my doubts just given the radical liberties taken with the casting and changes to the novels. I mean, for another example, in Drawing of the Three, King makes a major supporting character a disabled black woman for SPECIFIC REASONS. You could change that casting, let’s say, to her being white, Asian, or whatever, or Latina, let’s say, but what I’m saying is, you’re messing with King’s vision of the original classic novels and tales of The Gunslinger. Mess with it too much, and IT’S NOT THE GUNSLINGER/DARK TOWER.
But then again, I hate and despise most of the utter junk coming out of Hollywood these days (particularly over the past 15 years or under), so my expectations that this film or series will be great, are already greatly attenuated. I hate to sound so negative and cynical about it, but I must. Plus there’s a massively troubled production and development history for The Dark Tower for it to surmount, but I’m judging it on how the actual final product will turn out, or is starting to. And taking such radical liberties with the casting is a bad sign, in my opinion. Again, not for race reasons, but for the “messing with the original” reasons. Could Star Wars have been just as great with a black actor playing Luke? OF COURSE it could have been. But that, in this case, is definitely not the point and beside the point. I’ll be eager to see how this all pans out and if the final film is great, or a disaster. I really do hope it’s great. But this is disturbing me already. I normally wouldn’t care at all if they made such a radical change to the race or whatever identity to a well-known literary character adapted to film, but this seems a bit bizarre to me. I also can well understand why Matt M. would choose instead to play Randy Flagg, but I’m starting to now wish he’d chosen to play Roland as he was originally offered to. I’m sure he would’ve been the ideal Roland, somehow, or AN ideal Roland (as imagined by King and many of his fans).

Scott D. Briggs – July 1st, 2016