Finally. Stephen King's grand opus The Stand is finally getting the big-screen treatment. Warner Bros. and CBS Films are teaming to adapt the novel, which in many ways set the bar for a generation of post-apocalyptic stories and influenced works ranging from TV's Lost to music group Anthrax. Mosaic and Roy Lee are producing. The companies will co-develop and co-produce the feature film, with CBS having the option to participate in co-financing. Warners will handle worldwide marketing and distribution. The studios and producers will sit down with writers and directors in the coming weeks in an attempt to find the right take on the material. One thing to be determined is whether to attempt the adaptation in one or multiple movies. King will be involved in some capacity. CBS has held the rights for many years but recently realized the best way to undertake the project was with a partner. Warners beat out Fox and Sony in a tight bidding war for the gig, getting its hands on one of the biggest-selling books of all time. CBS, meanwhile, gets a chance to be involved in an ambitious big-budget tentpole with little downside. The company just released its fourth movie, The Mechanic, which performed better than expected this weekend with an opening of $11.4 million. The Stand is a story of good vs. evil after a virus wipes out most of the American population. While it features dozens of characters (such as the Trashcan Man and Mother Abigail) and overlapping story lines running over many years, the struggle boils down to a group of survivors fighting the Antichrist-like Randall Flagg. The novel was originally published in 1978, but by the time it was rereleased in 1990 with King adding and revising portions of the story, it had achieved cult-like status. George Romero and Warners separately tried in vain to launch a movie adaptation in the 1980s, and a tone-downed version was produced as a six-hour miniseries by ABC in 1994. In recent years, Marvel Comics has been adapting the story to great acclaim. King's stories made for popular Hollywood adaptations in the 1980s and '90s, but that love seemed to lose steam in the past decade. But with Universal mounting an ambitious take on The Dark Tower, and now The Stand, King may be getting ready to return to the throne as the novelist the town loves the most.
I remember loving the mini-series as a kid. They still show it on SciFi. I look forward to how a movie adaptation would look.
Great book...don't know how to fit it into a movie, but hopefully the story is as good when they chop the hell out of it
King should stay out of it. I don't think he does movies based on his books any favors. I'm pretty sure he was closely involved with the original Stand movie and the remake of The Shining and both of those movies were god awful.
I agree. He's an amazing author, and he paints an incredible mental picture, which is exactly why he should stick to that genre. When he tries to translate his stories into live pictures, it's almost like he gets too caught up in the literal meanings of his books instead of the deeper imagery that makes his work so good.
A little update to this movie which has had a multitude of stop and go's when it has come to getting off the ground.....Warner Bros apparently now has a particular actor in mind for it's new Randall Flagg. Link: http://deadline.com/2014/08/does-tv-hurt-movie-careers-true-detectives-matthew-mcconaughey-coveted-for-the-stand-and-gold-823461/
I hope they do justice to such a kick-ass book. Movie versions of King's books are often duds. When I read the book "Pet Sematary", I was 16 and had to have all lights on, had to have line of sight to all (locked!) windows and doors. But its film version was crap. McConaughey would make a perfect Randall Flagg.
I liked the 1994 series a lot. I was a teen so i didnt fully get it, but here it is on youtube.. http://youtu.be/Qv3gQfMgvVM
The 4 Parts of the mini series... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stand_(TV_miniseries) Part 1 - http://youtu.be/Qv3gQfMgvVM Part 2 - http://youtu.be/O0fNNHF7ObE Part 3 - http://youtu.be/7994BuTTVwo Part 4 - http://youtu.be/NV9FyLcrXGE
Misery was a very good adaptation of a King novel. Very close to the book, the only major difference being a tamed down version of the "hobbling" scene.
It seems lately, books are turned into trilogies (or even worse, the dreaded "quadrilogy") unnecessarily. They are stories that could have been told in two or even one film. The Stand is the exact opposite: it fits the bill for a trilogy perfectly. King himself split the story up into three parts:" Captain Trips", "On the Border", and "The Stand". Each one has a story arch and resolution that makes them feel a bit complete (though the resolution to "On the Border" is not a happy one, much like "Empire Strikes Back"), and each feels different, yet connected. If done right, this could be epic.
I have beef with the idea that the stand set the bar for post-apocalyptic stories. V. set the bar. carry on.
The Stand was published in 1978. V was made in 1983. The Stand is a bigger story, with more characters that were developed better, more well-written dialogue, and came five years previous. Your argument is invalid.
I'm not sure what the date of publication has to do with anything, frankly. Nor do I see how the amount of characters one has over the other makes any difference in bar setting. If you'd like to elaborate on those points, be my guest. However, I'll provide my point. V, when it came out was the most expensive series made for television to that date. It had one of the biggest marketing campaigns ever for a tv series that only Who Shot Jr?, M.A.S.H finale and Roots where it's contemporaries. If you were not old enough to actually been around when it premiered, I could possibly see how you might dismiss my point about the series. However, clearly V is one of the greatest miniseries to ever be produced, and was clearly as big of an influence as The Stand on all manner of creative filmmakers and writers. It also had an epic cliffhanger at a time when that was unheard of. Not sure my point was INVALID.
So my premise was that V, not The Stand set the bar for post-apocalyptic stories. Here are some unique ways that V set the bar. Budget. - at nearly 1 million dollars V was the most expensive production that television ever saw at the time. V, more than anything before it and even anything since it, was a product. Marketing. - Before there was such a thing as Viral Marketing V came alone with this unique campaign. Here's a quote from Allan Johnson, Tribune Staff Writer Awards. - in 2005 Entertainment Weekly named V one of the 10 best mini-series on dvd. Also, ET named it one of the 25 greatest sci-fi in the genre since 1982. Influences. - V has been cited as directly influencing the 4400, Independence Day, X-files, Babylon 5 and others. V was incredibly ahead of its time, it was an event. Imagine was they did with Carrie Underwood's Sound of Music Live, and ramp it up about 4 or 5 notches and you'll get the idea of how they marketed V at the time.
