Warner Bros. is on director number four, at least by my count, when it comes to a new adaptation of Stephen King‘s apocalyptic book “The Stand“. Following in the footsteps of David Yates, Ben Affleck and, most recently, Scott Cooper comes Josh Boone, director of The Fault in Our Stars due in theaters this June.
Boone is already set to adapt King’s “Lisey’s Story” for the big screen, expected some time around 2015, which should give you some idea when The Stand may actually finally hit theaters. Boone has even spoken of his love for King with Collider in the past saying:
The short of it is that my parents were born-again Baptists and I wasn’t allowed to read Stephen King. I had to rip the covers off of Christian books and glue them to Stephen King books, so that I could read them. I remember reading “The Stand” under my bed when I was 12, and I hid the book in the box springs under my bed, and my mom found it and burned it in the fireplace.
I wrote him a letter when I was 12, just to tell him how much I loved his books and how much I wanted to be a writer when I grew up and that he was my idol. I sent him a couple books, hoping that he’d sign them. I came home from school one day and my dad said, “There’s a box here from Stephen King.”
He had written me this beautiful letter in the front covers of each of the books. My parents were just so moved by the generosity, that he was willing to take the time to do that, that they lifted the Stephen King ban. So, to be able to go back to him, all these years later, and just hug him and thank him so much for being such a big part of my childhood, meant so much to me. To have him be part of the movie meant so much. I was just trying to honor him and what he meant to me, when I was that age.
It’s funny reading that story I think of my childhood and my mother wasn’t as strict and she loved for me to read and would buy me most any book I wanted until I wanted to read Stephen King. I had to buy the books on my own… so I did. There wasn’t any book burning however and no big box of signed copies from King and I’m not a Hollywood director, but what can I say… different paths. Stop judging me.
King even had a cameo in Boone’s Stuck in Love.
So will Boone finally be the one to get The Stand brought to the big screen? Seems as good a choice as any at this point. [THR]
