The road to the big screen for Stephen King’s The Stand has been winding. Back in the beginning of 2011 it was announced that Warner Bros. would be adapting the novel. Since then, there have been several people attached to direct the project; David Yates (Harry Potter films), Ben Affleck, and Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace). All have left for different reasons. Yates thought it would work best as a mini-series, Affleck for Batman, and Cooper over “creative differences”.
Now the adaptation is in the hands of Josh Boone (The Fault In Our Stars) and he plans tackling it all in one film. Here is what he had to tell Vulture:
We’re gonna do one three-hour, R-rated version with an amazing A-list cast across the board. Every single one of those characters will be somebody you recognize and somebody you relate to. And it’s gonna be awesome. I’m really excited. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever got to do in my entire life. If 12-year-old me had ever known that one day I’d be doing this, to even just go back and look at that kid, I’d be like, Keep doing what you’re doing! It’s just crazy. I’ve met so many actors over the years, and like, when I met Stephen King, I hugged him with tears in my eyes. He meant that much to me when I was young. I still say everything I learned about writing I learned from Stephen King. I don’t read screenplays. I don’t read screenplay how-to books. It’s always just, establish the character. Establish the character.
Here is what King himself had to say about the current state of the project
When I worked with Mick Garris on the miniseries, it was really sort of a rewarding experience because we had a chance to [focus on] the characters and I think I wrote the entire miniseries just so I could hear Gary Sinise say, ‘Country don’t mean dumb’ … Now I’ve been involved with Josh Boone who did The Fault in Our Stars and he’s working on the screenplay. He’s young and he’s ambitious and he’s totally behind the book and he seems to be doing a great job and seems to have a lot of support behind him from Warner Bros. So I have my fingers crossed, but that’s all that you need to do right? You just cross your fingers and hope.
What do you think, can The Stand be properly told in such a short amount of time?