New ‘Dark Tower’ Trailer Shows Off a Connected KINGdom (VIDEO)

If you wanted to know how exactly Sony planned to connect The Dark Tower to the other works of Stephen King, this one minute trailer narrated by The Gunslinger himself, Idris Elba, has some answers for you. Sort of.

Seeing as how Sony doesn't own the rights to a lot of the existing King adaptations like The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, etc., they crafted this clever animated trailer that shows how their film is connected to a number of other films without explicitly mentioning them by name. It's the kind of thing that gets Stephen King fans all geeked up to see The Dark Tower but leaves the average schmo scratching their head and wondering what the hell is going on. 

Sony obviously has plans beyond just linking The Dark Tower to existing properties, and their plan to create a shared cinematic universe involving King's various stories is still taking shape, but this at least gives some context for how they think it could all work together. Based on the final animation shown in the trailer, it seems the most obvious connection would be to have Matthew McConaughey's Man in Black (a.k.a. Randall Flagg) appear in a potential adaptation of The Stand, but that seems like a long shot at best right now. It'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out once The Dark Tower kicks things off on August 4.