After years of false starts and near-misses, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series is finally making the leap to the big screen in February 2017. With Idris Elba all set to strap on the sandalwood-gripped revolvers of gunslinger Roland Deschain and Matthew McConaughey signed on to don the cloak of the sinister Man in Black, fans now are clamouring to find out what else from King’s magnum opus will make it onto the silver screen.

Fortunately, thanks to an Entertainment Weekly interview with King and director Nikolaj Arcel – not to mention a breakdown of a previous draft of the script over on Ain’t It Cool News – there’s quite a bit we can tease out about the Dark Tower movie already. With that in mind, here are my five big predictions regarding what lies in store for Roland and his ka-tet next year.

5. It starts the same way the books do

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed” – the opening line of the first book in the series, The Gunslinger, is one of the most iconic in the series. Surely, there’s no other way for the film version to begin? The way King tells it, previous drafts of The Dark Tower screenplay by screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner planned to do just that, until he insisted that the original opening be retained. That said, while Constant Readers shouldn’t expect too slavish an Dark Tower adaptation, because…

4. The rest of the plot will be very different

OK, maybe that’s a slight overstatement. Still, fans shouldn’t expect this first film to be a direct recreation of The Gunslinger and its closest sequels, The Drawing of the Three and The Waste Lands. Based off comments by King and Arcel – and judging from the script reviewed by AICN – after we open with Roland’s pursuit of the Man in Black, the story will jump forward to cover some of the events from the The Drawing of the Three, skipping over much of the material in-between.

This will mean re-arranging the narrative’s overall timeline, and in the case of Jake Chamber’s introduction to the story, streamlining similar related episodes together into one scene. And speaking of Jake, although it’s safe to say you can expect to see Roland’s surrogate son on the big screen next February, you might want to prepare yourself for the fact that…

3. Several key characters won’t appear

Specifically, don’t expect to see either Eddie or Susannah pop up during this outing. It might seem crazy that a Dark Tower film covering material from the first two instalments in the series won’t include two of the core characters from those books (and the series itself as whole), but apparently the pair are only foreshadowed this time around. This suggests that Eddie and Susannah’s debut is intentionally being held back until a sequel film or TV series gets the green light.

Turning our attention to the wider cast, the jury is still out on whether everyone’s favourite talking dog-thing Oy will make an appearance (although my bet is he won’t), and the lack of flashbacks in the script suggests that few of the major figures from Roland’s past will be getting any screentime either. On the other hand, if you’re a fan of characters who only appear in the later Dark Tower novels, you might want to start rejoicing, since…

2. Other characters will appear earlier

The virtue of scripting a Dark Tower film after King has already wrapped up the series is that the filmmakers already know which characters, places and concepts from the later books they’d like to set-up earlier in the story. Based off the recent casting announcements (as well as Goldsman and Pinkner’s screenplay), it seems highly likely that we’ll get to visit Devar-Toi significantly earlier than we did in the books, and that means we’ll meet Pimli Prentiss and Tirana, as well as the Taheen and the Can-Toi, much earlier than expected.

There’s also word that the Manni are set to make an appearance in this outing. I also wonder if Arcel plans to establish the Crimson King as the overall series big bad up front, in contrast to King’s more delayed reveal (this seems likely, given the inclusion of Devar-Toi). While hardcore Constant Readers are likely pulling out their hair right now over all these changes to their beloved story, there’s really nothing to get stressed over, since…

1. Roland will be carrying the Horn of Eld

As book fans already know (and seriously, stop reading now if you’re new to the series), The Dark Tower has two endings. One is a happy ending that neatly resolves all the major plot threads. The other is a coda which King begs us not to read. In this second denouement, we follow Roland into the Tower itself, where he is judged for the various crimes of action (and, crucially, inaction) he committed to further his single-minded quest.

The punishment for his wrongdoings? To be sent back to the beginning of the very first book in the series, to relive his life all over again, with the faint hope that this time, he will make the right choices and break a cycle he has unknowingly been trapped in for countless years. It’s a bit downer, however, it comes with the revelation that this time around, Roland is carrying the Horn of Eld – something he had callously abandoned in his previous lifetime – giving readers consolation things might actually work out for our favourite gunslinger on this latest go-round.

What does all this mean for The Dark Tower movie? Well, according to numerous sources, when we first meet Roland in the film, he already has the Horn of Eld. This basically means that the film is able to work as a sequel to books – AICN aptly compares it to the soft reboot of the Star Trek franchise – meaning that any changes made to the characters or story on-screen won’t actually contradict the books.

It’s a smart choice and gives Arcel and his team a lot of freedom. My only concern is that it means we might not ever get to see the series’ original, haunting coda realised in live action (unless another symbol can be substituted in place of the Horn of Eld), which seems like a massive missed opportunity.

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What are your theories for the Dark Tower movie? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter or Facebook!