The history of the long twisted history of the attempts of numerous false starts in adapting one of Stephen King’s the Stand, one of his largest books has been almost long and difficult as the book itself . The list of directors took on and then departed the project, is a numberous the most recent being Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) who stepped up to the helm in February 2014. At the time, Boone planned to make a three hour, R-rated movie with an A-list cast. This gradually evolved; becoming four movies, then a TV series with a movie finale. At the start of February, 2016, Warner Bros. Pictures’ option on The Stand rights expired, and so now it rests back at CBS Films, which must decide whether to make the movie with another studio… or fund it alone.According to producer Roy Lee, while The Stand movie still in the works, the creative team behind the project are once again looking at how best to tackle the adaptation. Speaking to Collider at DICE 2016, Lee confirmed recent reports that Boone will work on another King adaptation, Revival, first, before making any decisions on the future of The Stand.
“Right now it’s just in a holding pattern trying to figure out how to best make the movie because we’ve toyed with breaking it up into multiple movies, making it into one, making it into two. The latest draft, Josh Boone had written it and he was very anxious to make it but since then has written another script, Revival, which he’s gonna do beforehand, so we’re just waiting for that.”stephen king revival book cover
Ideally the Stand must either be made into multiple films, like Harry Potter, or even (another) TV mini-series, similar to that which aired in 1994. Boone seemed on board with both ideas in June, 2015, saying that he would develop the work as an 8-part mini series; one that would then culminate in a feature film finale. Now, however, Lee revealed that plan is shelved due the logistics of the worldwide movie release.
“The TV component would not necessarily be released at the same time worldwide. So it became a logistic nightmare to try to figure that out, so that plan was abandoned.”
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Lee also added that King still feels as though the original mini-series was a faithful adaptation of his book, so that might also be a factor in Boone deciding against going down the TV route. This I personally agree with, the 1994 miniseries was just fine,between that and the 2008-2012 comic book series based on the unabridged edition of the book, the story has been told no reason to do it again, then again I was never really a fan of the book to begin with and I am much more excited at the upcoming adaption of Kings more recent novel Revival which is currently in the writing and pre production stage.
