Description of First Footage of The Dark Tower

In Las Vegas, the annual studio and theater owner meeting called CinemaCon is being held. It is basically a meeting of the extremely wealthy for a week long party. The "work" part is watching the studios sales pitch their summer movies hoping to encourage access to more screens whenever possible for what they hope will be massive opening weekends. As a result the theater execs get feted with early footage, entire movies, and celebs meet and greets. The events are closed to the public and some of the press are allowed but since its for summer movies no recordings are allowed and the studios rarely release the footage to the public. The Dark Tower was one such movie to do its pitch. Below is the description of the footage according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The footage opens with a look at a door frame standing free in the middle of a barren landscape. It then it cuts to Roland in the desert as the famous opening line to King's The Gunslinger, the first volume in the series, is displayed on screen: "The Man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.” The footage gives a strong idea of just what The Man in Black is capable of, and it's scarily creepy. Roland and The Man in Black then square off, with Roland telling the villain, "I do not kill with my gun, I kill with my heart." He fires at The Man in Black, who catches the bullet from behind his back.

The footage then cuts to the young boy Jake, who lives in New York but has dreams of Roland and a Dark Tower that must stay standing or else billions will die. Jake's therapist tried to tell him it's a dream, but Jake doesn't believe it. Soon, he is shown exploring an abandoned building, where he discovers a portal that takes him to Roland's world.

Soon, he presents Roland with one of the drawings the boy made of him from his dreams, and Roland explains that as long as The Man in Black is out there, the Tower will fall and Hell will follow.

There are slow-mo shots, including a big fight between the Gunslinger and The Man in Black, as well as an extended look at Roland's prowess with his guns: when Jake is kidnapped, Roland shoots the man who did it from hundreds of yards away, simply by listening to where the bad guy is.

The description is light on details so not particularly spoilerish. However if you want a spoiler and opinion filled description of the same footage head over to AICN. The main takeaway is while the novels themselves had a very light sci-fi touch mostly by indicating that Roland's Western-like present with early 1800s tech was built on the long ago destruction (likely nuclear) of an advanced society (circa the 21st century as imagined in the 1980s), that formula has been flipped by the movie. The emphasis seemed to be on the sci-fi elements with the Western part being retained only via the Gunslinger himself. Of course this is based on just a short snippet so for die hard fans it might be a cause of concern but best to take a wait and see approach.