EastEnders fans will know Sam Strike, the actor who starred as Johnny Carter in the soap up until 2014. He is now taking on a rather different role and instead of being in Walford, he will now be heading to Mid World to battle the infamous Man in Black on the Amazon Prime series "The Dark Tower." Strike also reportedly appeared in the Syfy series “Nightflyers,” which eventually ended up being a critically acclaimed Netflix series.

Entertainment Weekly confirmed that Strike, 25, had been given the lead role in the TV adaptation of Stephen King’s epic saga “The Dark Tower.”

Dark Tower series going ahead

Sam Strike headed to Twitter on Thursday, cryptically quoting famous words from the beginning of the “Dark Tower” story.

His role as Roland Deschain was confirmed by Entertainment Weekly the same day. Despite the fact that the “The Dark Tower” Film, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, didn’t do well, it was always been said that the TV adaptation would come. Rumours state that Amazon has been working on the streaming channel’s version of the “Dark Tower” series for around two years. According to Entertainment Weekly, Deadline was the first to release the news and no comment was yet available from Amazon.

It sounds like it might work this time, as Glen Mazzara, a former producer on “The Walking Dead,” will be behind the new “The Dark Tower” series.

Mazzara was heard to say that he had been a fan of Stephen King for “decades,” adding that the opportunity to take the “The Dark Tower” and adapt it as a series was a “great honour.”

‘The Dark Tower’ is a complex story to tell

As noted by AOL, Mazzara said the story covered by “The Gunslinger,” “Wizard and Glass” and “The Wind Through the Keyhole,” etc., required a “long format” to cover King’s complex story of Roland Deschain and how he became the iconic Gunslinger.

It will also give more detail of the Man in Black and how their battle and rivalry cost Roland everyone and everything he loved.

In an interview, Mazzara said he couldn’t be more excited to lay out this story and that it feels like receiving a “key to a treasure chest.” One thing to make King’s Constant Readers happy is that there will be “billy-bumblers” in the series.

It would be nice to see our friend Oy again!

The Man in Black a.k.a. Randall Flagg will be played by Jasper Paakkonen, who also starred in Amazon’s “Vikings” and the film “BlacKkKlansman” released in 2018 and directed by Spike Lee. No clue as to when the “Dark Tower” series has yet been given.