Stephen King fans are sure being spoilt right now. Not only is a screen adaptation of
The Dark Tower in the works in a loving & more faithful way that is more exciting than anybody could have ever hoped for even in their wildest dreams (well, unless you aren't a fan of Ron Howard!) but today,
THR have announced that Warner Bros. and CBS Films are looking to bring a new adaptation of King's 1,100 word signature tome
The Stand to film. Both The Dark Tower and The Stand are King's largest scoped, most ambitious and perhaps two of his most distinct and popular works. The Stand in particular seems to have grown in conscious among King fans as his very best novel and like many a lengthy King story, it's hard to summarise it in just a few words. Though honestly the least you know the better, so
buy the book now before continuing and loose yourself in the story. The Stand is a post-apocalyptic novel where a plague nicknamed Captain Trips has caused mass devastation to the planet, wiping out almost everyone. The novel focuses on the rag-tag group of survivors who share dreams of a mysterious evil being and they team-up, forming a community, to try and rid them of it. Warner Bros. are said to have beaten out several studio's for the right to team with CBS to make this film a reality and have now called open season on writers and directors who want to pitch something. Immediately a few names come to mind for me -
Frank Darabont (as with The Mist, The Green Mile & The Shawshank Redemption, he is King's definitive director) and
Sam Raimi, who is currently stuck in the drudgery fairytale land of Oz - without an actor now and he's better off gone from that and back to something in his horror wheelhouse. It's actually a little funny that a WB film of The Stand is announced today as I recently tasked OWF's Simon Gallagher with a feature article titled "10 Movies We'd Rather See Sam Raimi Direct than Oz"... and he pulled Stephen King's The Stand out of the hat as a book he would want to see Raimi adapt! Or it might have been me? Regardless... we both agreed that this material would allow Raimi the awesome platform for storytelling that he just wouldn't get away with otherwise. It's all early days and WB haven't yet worked out how they want to tackle the novel and whether it'll be a two movie project. Certainly there's a helluva lot of material and storytelling that would be troubling to condense into a 2 and a bit hour feature. Two films is clearly what's required but man... how do you bring people back for that gloomy second act? It's definitely not the easiest adaptation for WB.
Indeed, we've already seen a cult mini-series adaptation which was a modest version of the novel that clocked in at six hours and still felt like it was incomplete (though with the perfect casting of Gary Sinise) - but with a studio budget and a more ambitious scope and director, there's lots of room for a new movie here. So, Hollywood has caught the Stephen King bug. I'm not quite sure what has done it, certainly it can't be the quality of any of his recent novels but regardless - I'm a very happy man. I would love to hear your thoughts on this adaptation which if WB are listening, must be R-Rated and not shy away from the dark and grim parts of the novel!