To go by Josh Boone‘s first two films, Stuck in Love and this weekend’s new release The Fault in Our Stars, the last thing you’d think he’d be doing next was an adaptation of Stephen King‘s post-apocalyptic novel “The Stand“. Even if you were able to come to grips with the possibility you’d probably just laugh it off and say, “Warner Bros. would never allow him to truly adapt it into the film it ought to be.” Well, hold up, that just might be what we’ll get.
In an interview with Vulture, Boone says the plan is for an R-rated film that will run around three hours, and if the plan going in is for such a film this just might work…
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.
[amz asin=”B001C4NXKM” size=”small”]Now there will clearly need to be some corners cut when it comes to “The Stand” which was originally printed at about 823 pages in 1978 and then re-released in as a “Complete & Uncut Edition” in 1990, which went for about 1,152 pages in hardcover. Clearly that’s too much material for even a three-hour movie, but if done right it could be one hell of a story. Here’s the plot description from Amazon:
This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death.
And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides — or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail — and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.
I read this book so long ago I don’t even really remember it and I was mezzo mezzo on the television adaptation as I never quite understood why all of King’s novels were getting television adaptations instead of feature film, especially when his novels were not made to be network television mini-series. Here’s to hoping Boone is able to give us something worth talking about, which might just lead to a few other classic King novels getting feature film adaptations. After all, Cary Fukunaga (“True Detective”) is attached to that adaptation of “IT” over at New Line, perhaps both will be given the same, three-hour, R-rated treatment… wouldn’t that be something worth going to the theater to see.
