Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey REVEAL the reason for joining The Dark Tower

Sony Picture's The Dark Tower is just a few days away from hitting the theatres. And, just ahead of its release, actors Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey have revealed the reasons for joining the movie based on Stephen King's novels of the same name.

Also read: Watch Dark Tower trailer 2: Gunslinger and The Man in Black's war comes to earth

After much anticipation, Sony Pictures had announced in 2015 that they are developing a film on King's popular series of novels and also planning for a TV series. The Dark Tower movie was then slated for a February 2017 release which was later delayed to August 2017.

In the movie, which is directed by A Royal Affair helmer Nikolaj Arcel, Idris Elba portrays the character of Roland Deschain aka the Gunslinger. And, Matthew McConaughey plays the villainous character named Walter Padick aka The Man in Black.

In a recent interaction with Cinema Blend, both Elba and McConaughey revealed the reasons for choosing to be a part of the franchise.

"What brought me was this opportunity to make something original, something that was definitely going to be an exercise for the imagination of any audience, whether you read the books or not. Getting to play a gun-slingin' hero, that was my main one," explained Elba.

"Outside of wanting to work with Matthew [McConaughey] and Nic [Arcel] and the Sony team, it was really about this page one fantastic new idea, new film, new concept, new franchise, new hero."

Speaking of the same matter, McConaughey said that he wanted to be a part of something original, not any year-old franchise which he already has seen. The actor told Cinema Blend, "There are franchises out there, and I've seen them, had some offers, and they were ones that I even liked. But I felt like they were the second or third one, and the characters I was being offered were sort of an amendment to the story, because they'd succeeded earlier."

But after getting the script for The Dark Tower in hand, the Interstellar actor was like "Oh, this is original, a chance to get in on the ground floor, to have some authorship with the character that I would go play."

He further continued, "To get in with Idris, Nikolaj, and Sony, and the creators, and go 'Hey, we're gonna be the first to tell the story. We're gonna be the first to present you The Dark Tower.' And if it's a success, we can come back and do another one."

The sci-fi movie will feature Tom Taylor (Jake Chambers), Abbey Lee (Tirana), and Fran Kranz (Pimli), Jackie Earle Haley (Sayre), Katheryn Winnick (Laurie Chambers) and Claudia Kiim (Arra Champignon). The Dark Tower movie is set to open in theatres on August 4.