While we’re still a little ways away from seeing the first footage from the long-awaited Dark Tower movie, a new image has been unveiled that teases a pretty familiar part of the books. Stephen King authored eight books in the Dark Tower series over the past three decades, and so turning this into a cohesive feature film posed a herculean challenge. If you’ve been tracking the project you know that many have tried and failed to bring it to the big screen in the past, including J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, but this final iteration kicked off a few years ago when Ron Howard envisioned an ambitious adaptation plan that included three feature films and a television component interspersed between each movie—basically two additional seasons of a limited TV series to fill in the story gaps.

That version had so many fits and starts it’s hard to remember exactly how it all came crashing down, but the film is finally moving forward at Sony with Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) directing and Howard producing. However, as filming is underway with Idris Elba as the protagonist (Roland Deschain) and Matthew McConaughey as the antagonist (Walter Padick), we’ve begun to learn that fans of the books are probably in for some pretty major surprises when the movie rolls around. Namely, the film is essentially acting as a sequel of sorts, as it picks up after the book’s events have taken place, but also as part of a repeating cycle of events that continues to occur (trying to be intentionally vague here so as not to spoil things).


This new image is shared by actor Tom Taylor, who fills the role of Jake Chambers, a young boy who aids Roland in his journey. Taylor exists on Earth, but also ventures to “Mid-World”, which is where the bulk of The Dark Tower takes place. In this new image, we see the doorway that separates Earth from Mid-World, with Taylor preparing to walk through.

Exciting stuff, eh? Take a closer look at the photo below, along with some high-resolution shots from the film. The Dark Tower opens in theaters on February 17, 2017.

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Image via Sony Pictures
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Image via Sony Pictures

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Image via Sony Pictures
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Image via Sony Pictures