This “Dark Tower” app is the most amazing thing and why aren’t more people talking about it?!

**Warning: spoilers ahead (but they’re really cool)**

As you may have heard, Stephen King’s magnum opus, The Dark Tower, is finally getting the big (and possibly small) screen treatment. With Idris Elba set to play the hero Roland Deschain (aka “The Gunslinger”) and Matthew McConaughey tackling the ~bad guy~ role of Walter Paddick (aka, “The Man in Black” and, eventually revealed to be the infamous Randall Flagg), this epic movie adaptation is already getting an INSANE amount of hype.

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And in fandom-pleasing form, Sony Pictures is already blowing our minds away with a crazy app that makes the world of The Dark Tower come to life before your very eyes.

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Now, full disclosure, I have not personally read this 8-book series (YET), so when I played with the app (which I promise you is really fucking awesome), a lot of the references went over my head. SO, I enlisted the expertise of my boyfriend – who HAS read all the books – to figure out what it all means.

First, you have to actually download the app (don’t worry it’s free). And It’s called “Sombra.”

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Now, if you happen to have a copy of the latest Entertainment Weekly handy, you’ll get your first ~taste~ of how interactive the app really is.

JUST LOOK AT THIS MAGIC.

But what is SOMBRA you ask?

Well, according to expert-boyfriend, “Sombra” is a corporation in the Dark Tower books and they support this being called “The Crimson King,” who is basically the overall villain of the series (and Randall Flagg, i.e. Matthew McConaughey, serves the Crimson King, too.) EERIE.

What about that rose thing that pops up?!

The significance of the rose you see on the Entertainment Weekly cover is a nod to a special rose that grows in New York City. It is a “nexus point” between our world and the world where Roland Deschain and Randall Flagg are running around, a place called Mid-World. COOL, RIGHT?!

Now, check out what happens when you use the app on Matthew McConaughey’s recent twitter post.

HOW DOES THIS EVEN WORK?!

So, what is that symbol?

It’s “the eye” of the Crimson King, think of it as the official logo of his royal evilness.

And what is with the bells?

The bells you hear are the “todash chimes” – WTF is “todash” you ask? It’s basically the ability to travel between our world and Mid-World, you can even think of it as space-time travel. And the chimes occur when someones “goes todash.”

The “going todash” effect on the app actually works in a few other places too, you can use it on this Stephen King post:

(BTW, the Charlie the Choo-Choo book King is holding in this pic is a reference to the third book in the series, “The Wastelands.”)

It also works on this tweet by King from May:

And even this tweet from Idris Elba, also from May:

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Those are all the interactive images we’ve found so far, but we’re SURE there will be more to come.

What’s kinda crazy about this ~viral~ marketing campaign is that this app wasn’t even available until a couple days ago (July 19th – “19” being a significant number in the Dark Tower world), yet King and Elba made those interactive posts BACK IN MAY!? HOW THE…

Considering The Dark Tower doesn’t even come out until February, this is a crazy amount of planning on the part of Sony (and the entire cast and mastermind of the series), and frankly we are LOV-ING-IT.  We can’t imagine what other magic lies ahead of us, but we’re pretty sure it’s gonna be amazing.

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