Stephen King

It doesn’t take a Stephen King super-fan to spot the two major easter eggs in the first trailer for The Dark Tower, but as Constant Readers (King’s nickname for his loyal fanbase) can tell you, that’s probably just the tip of the iceberg. King’s epic novel series is, among other things, a riveting piece of meta-fiction that ties all of his works (and worlds) together, so it’s inevitable that this summer’s highly-anticipated film adaptation will have more than a few easter eggs for casual fans and Constant Readers alike to discover — and King himself is giving you a head start.

Marketing for big-budget blockbusters has become so predictable that you can now mark the passage of time between any given month and a film’s release date by the number of TV spots and featurettes you’ve seen. Despite a handful of early viral promotions, Sony’s approach to marketing The Dark Tower has been fairly unusual in comparison to how other studios typically handle films of similar size and budget. That they didn’t release a trailer (or even a proper teaser) for such a highly-anticipated blockbuster until today, just three months out from release, seemed strange — to say the least. And yet that delayed marketing tactic feels more like a teachable moment than a cautionary tale.

If you’re a huge Stephen King fan (like me!), then you undoubtedly noticed two fairly huge easter eggs in the first trailer for The Dark Tower, which finally — after months of anticipation and growing concern — debuted online early this morning. Those less familiar with the SKU (the Stephen King Universe) may have missed the pair of references to two of King’s most iconic stories, both of which have also been adapted before.

By this point in a big film’s marketing cycle, we typically would have seen a couple trailers, a ton of posters, lengthy magazine pieces, the works. In contrast, there has been so little concrete info out there on The Dark Tower, which opens in theaters in almost exactly three months, that some people (like, y’know, me) began to doubt whether the movie would open on time, or even if it existed at all.

I enjoy reading books. I'm talking about actual books filled with pages of paper with words printed in ink on them. I like the way a book feels and sounds as you physically turn the pages. I buy a lot of my books at a store in Apple Valley that sells their books at half price and always enjoy finding a long sought-after book in hardcover when I'm shopping there...

Best-selling author Joe Hill is tomorrow's guest on the Power 96 Morning Show. The son of Stephen King, Hill has written several novels including Horns, Heart-Shaped Box, NOS4A2 and a collection of short stories titled 20th Century Ghosts...