I don’t really see a problem with both Susannah and Roland being black. As long as Sussanah and Eddie remain an interracial couple, I think that would preserve enough of the storyline. I may not be remembering the story correctly, but the way I remember it is most of the racial tension in The Drawing Of The Three was between Sussanah and Eddie, not between Susannah and Roland.
Nope, “Detta” specifically hated Roland, though to be fair only in part because he was White; she also sensed he was hardcore badass. She also hated Eddie but regarded Eddie as more of a pushover (she uses a tied-up Eddie as bait to trap Roland at one point).
This is a bit besides the point though - that particular casting decision is only one of numerous indicators that what will be filmed is not going to much resemble the books. Hell, at this point, we can’t be sure there will even be a Susannah/Odetta/Detta character, or an Eddie. Three casting decisions have been made - Roland, the Man in Black, and “Tirana”. No mention, so far, of Eddie, Susannah, or Jake.
It is an interesting contrast to the casting of Gaiman’s American Gods, which so far, appears spot-on. The latter gives me hope, the former fills me with dread; in particular, because King adaptations are very hit or miss (perhaps not helped by King’s own somewhat uncritical enthusiasm for each and every project).
I think I’ve lost interest in seeing this.
He gets paid whether it bombs or not, right?
Not sure how that works: if he’s paid a percentage, he may well care. 
Personally, I just get the impression he’s an enthusiastic guy, who loves seeing his stuff adapted. The one exception, apparently, is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (widely considered one of the best horror movies of all time). It was remade more to King’s liking, as a mini-series - and the remake is widely considered forgettable.
The overall message is that King is a crackerjack author (sometimes!), but very unreliable as a guide to adapting his own works.
Didn’t Stephen King say in an interview that he charges something ridiculously low to make a film adaptation of one of his novels like 1 cent or a dollar? Or maybe he just does that for smaller, low-budget, independent film adaptations.
Somewhere towards the end of the series, after King has put himself in as a character, one of the other characters mentions that Roland and King resemble each other.
When I pictured Roland, I pictured him as an uglier Clint Eastwood. If I picture him as black, he looks more like Woody Strode than that Elba prettyboy.
Personally, Roland always looked like Scott Glenn to me.
This would surprise no-one who’s seen Maximum Overdrive
That’s very interesting - and certainly supports the thesis that King is a very enthusiastic fellow who is happy to see his stuff adapted (even where, as here, he gets no financial benefit whatsoever from it).
That’s pretty much perfect.
I’m fine with casting Elba. A lot of things need to be trimmed out and Odetta can despise Roland simply because he dragged her into another time/world. The story doesn’t lose much cutting the racial crap. However, I read somewhere that Abbey Lee had been cast as the “female lead.” The female lead is Susannah. If the Ka-tet and it’s purpose isn’t central to the plot, then this is gonna blow chunks.
I’m not fine with the casting of Elba (right now), because it is just another bit of proof that the story is going to be radically different - together with (1) the fact only one movie is planned, (2) they have cast “Tirana” (but no Susannah, or Eddie, or Jake); and (3) the article states they are gonna skip the entire first movie.
In short, you can’t look at it in isolation; its part of a pattern, in which the original story has been rewritten to the extent it appears, based on the small amount of evidence available, to be a totally different animal.
That said, I’d have been unhappy if the only difference was that Roland was Black, because I do think that “racial crap” is a large part of at least The Drawing of Three (I’d also have been unhappy if Susanna was White, or not in a wheelchair, and for the same reason). Moreover, Roland is supposed, in the story, to be based in part of Spaghetti Westerns by way of Clint Eastwood - he’s expressly described that way - and in that universe, such tropes are supposed to have substance, as a big part of the Dark Tower is playing with them.
However, be that as it may - it is a bad sign when the first casting revelations indicate that the film-makers have a vision totally at odds with the source material. Who knows, maybe they will pull off what Kuprick did with The Shining, and this thing will be a classic of the genre despite the differences … one can only hope.
They have cast their Jake Chambers.
You’d think the article would bother to actually include a photo of the actor, considering that he has existing film credits, but apparently that was too much work for the people at Variety.
So I’ve done their homework for them.
I’d say he’s a little younger than I imagined Jake being (I had him pegged as somewhere around 13-14), but he looks like he could pull off the part. He’s also British, so hopefully his fake American accent is at least as good as Idris Elba’s.
I think in “The Wastelands,” it specifically mentions Jake being 11.
This. Jake is 10 in the Gunslinger, maybe 14 by the time The Dark Tower ends. Since they’re skipping the first book, 11 would be about right. I actually thought the kid looked a bit too old, but then- Hollywood tends to age up kid characters.