Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’ to be adapted into Four Movies

The epic novel The Stand is one of Stephen King's best known and popular novels, the complete and uncut version spanning 1152 pages. A movie adaptation has been in development for years and The Fault in Our Stars director Josh Boone is set to direct. When speaking to Kevin Smith's Hollywood Babble-On podcast Boone has revealed developments for the adaptation with the big news being The Stand will span four movies. When speaking on Hollywood Babble-On Boone talks about the developments:

"I really wanted to do an A-list actor, really grounded, credible version of the movie. I sold them on that and they hired me…I sold them on a single, three hour movie. I went and got [Stephen] King sold on it, everybody’s really excited…I told the story non-linear and that was the way I was able to compress that book and get everything into that script. You open with Mother Abigail dying and sending the guys off, and then you jump back in time… So what happened is the script gets finished, I write it in like five months, everybody loves it, King loves it, $87 million is what it was budgeted at, really expensive for a horror drama that doesn’t have set pieces."

Due to the dilemma Warner Brothers presented Boone with a compromise of making four movies. This was Boone's reaction:

"They came back and said “would you do it as multiple films?” and I said “fuck yes!” I loved my script, and I was willing to drop it in an instant because you’re able to do an even truer version that way. So I think we are going to do like four movies. I can’t tell you anything about how we’re going to do them, or what’s going to be in which movie. I’ll just say we are going to do four movies, and we’re going to do The Stand at the highest level you can do it at, with a cast that’s going to blow people’s minds. We’ve already been talking to lots of people, and have people on board in certain roles that people don’t know about. We’re looking to go into production next year, maybe in the spring."

The Stand is a great novel, many considering it to be King's magnum opus, telling how a virus killing off over 99% of the world's population and the remaining population in America split into two factions based in Boulder, Colorado and Las Vegas (guess which one is the evil faction). The novel itself is split into three parts which making the adaptation as a multiple movies perfectly plausible. The Stand has been adapted as a TV mini-series back in 1994 and many directors have been attached to the film adaptation including Ben Affleck and Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart). The Stand has no release date yet but fans of the novel are eagerly awaiting the film adaptation, even if it is with baited breath.