The Dark Tower Casts Newcomer to Play Pivotal Character Jake Chambers

Stephen King's The Dark Tower has added a new actor on to its main cast.

According to Variety, Sony and Media Rights Capital have been searching for someone to play the pivotal character of the young Jake Chambers in the movie adaptation. Now, they have chosen actor Tom Taylor to play the role.

Joining Taylor are Golden Globe winner Idris Elba (Star Trek Beyond, Prometheus) as gunslinger Roland Deschain, Academy-Award winner Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club) as the mysterious Man in Black, and actress Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road) whose role remains unknown. Meanwhile, Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul is rumored to join the cast as well.

The Dark Tower won't be a straight up adaptation of The Gunslinger, which is the first book in the series. The film will instead begin right in the middle of the multi-book story at a time when Roland is on the search for the titular tower. The movie will reportedly be set "in the modern world," leading to speculations that the film will highlight the third book in the series called The Waste Lands.

In The Dark Tower, Chambers is Deschain's young protege. Tom Taylor is relatively unknown in the industry, having only appeared in the TV series Doctor Foster, Legends, and The Last Kingdom. This movie will be his biggest role to date. Hopefully, the actor will be able to give justice to the gunslinger's protege.

To be directed by Nikolaj Arcel, The Dark Tower is slated for release on February 17, 2017.