Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey are ready to face off in Stephen King's epic "Dark Tower."

The two actors will star in a film adaptation of King's eight-novel series (though it will exclude the first book, "The Gunslinger"). Elba will play Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger left in the Wild West-like land Mid-World. He's pursuing McConaughey's man in black, who is attempting to get to the tower that is a nexus point between time and space. If he succeeds, he would gain terrible power, so Elba's gunslinger must stop him.

The author himself confirmed the casting on Twitter:

While King and director Nikolaj Arcel said the first book would be left out of the adaptation, it's unclear which of the others (plus short stories and comics) would be the focus of the movie. This adaptation has traveled a very long road — Ron Howard tried developing a trilogy of movies, plus a cable TV series in 2010. But now, King told Entertainment Weekly that all the pieces are in place.

"Other people have tried fantasy spectacle. Sometimes it works, sometimes it works really well when it's based on a series of books, like 'The Hunger Games' or 'Harry Potter,' and sometimes it doesn't," King says. "What I have to go back to is this: We have Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, two great actors. You've got a great production team and Akiva Goldsman as the primary script writer. The team is in place, so we'll hope for the best."

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