The ink is apparently dry on the deal for the man who will direct The Dark Tower.

That man is Nikolaj Arcel, who was first reported to be attached to the project earlier this year and has now been officially confirmed (via Deadline) as the director by Sony Pictures, which picked up the massive adaptation of Stephen King's eight-novel cycle after it was developed and then dropped by both Universal and Warner Bros.

Although there have been several versions of the script, Arcel -- who directed A Royal Affair and co-wrote the original film version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in his native Denmark -- will do his own rewrite with fellow Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen. The movie will be based on King's first book in the cycle, The Gunslinger, which introduces us to the last gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and the alternate, ruined version of our world in which he searches for the legendary Dark Tower of the title.

Still to be determined is how many movies Arcel will direct in the series, how many films are actually planned, and whether the original idea to bridge the movies with limited TV series is still in the mix (Deadline says it is).

We'll stay cautiously optimistic for now, because this project has nearly gone under twice before and could always collapse again, but the news that The Dark Tower has a director is a good sign indeed. His next task: finding the man who will play Roland.

(Via Deadline)