A movie adaptation of Stephen King‘s popular book series The Dark Tower has been set up and developed at multiple movie studios over the years before being eventually dropped and moving on to the next studio willing to give it a shot.

The latest studio to take on the ambitious adaptation is Sony, who seems to have a lot of faith that it could be one of their next big franchises after we found out back in April that the first movie was being fast tracked by the studio.

Now comes word that Sony has found the spot they want to release the first movie on, setting a release date of January 13, 2017.

The big steps this latest attempt at adapting The Dark Tower needs to take is finding and signing a director to make it and a good actor to star. Ron Howard was previously attached to direct for a while, but because he’s currently busy with the third movie in the Da Vinci Code franchise, titled Inferno, he will only be producing the first movie along with Brian Grazer and Erica Huggins.

Big names like Russell Crowe and Javier Bardem have been mentioned as possibilities for the role of gunslinger Roland Deschain, but there hasn’t been any word lately whether they’re still candidates or who else could be in line for the job.

The screenplay was written by Akiva Goldsman, who wrote a new draft of the script for Sony’s acquisition of the property along with Jeff Pinkner that’s primarily based on the first book in King’s series, which is titled The Gunslinger.

The focus is currently on the first movie with plans to make multiple movies, but the companion TV series that has always been part of the plan is also still being developed as well.

[Source: The Wrap]