Hey guys! Horrorella here...
Some new details have emerged on the long-gestating adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand. Current director Josh Boone (THE FAULT IN OUR STARS) recently spoke with Collider and offered a little bit of insight into his vision for the film.
I finished writing the script maybe a month ago. Stephen [King] absolutely loved it. It’s, I think, the first script ever approved by him. [It’ll be] a single version movie of The Stand. Three Hours. It hews very closely to the novel.
This is really good news. The project has undergone many changes as different directors have come and gone, but at one point, the idea of a two hour film was being kicked around. Given the size and scope of the source material, it would be nearly impossible to make an adaptation that even remotely resembled the original story in just two hours. With three, granted some material will have to go, but at least it will convey the grand scale of the story and have enough time to adequately cover the core plot.
Not only that, but Boone himself is a huge fan of King’s work, and talks a bit about the adaptation process. Even with a three-hour runtime, some of the book is going to have to go. And though Boone doesn't give any specifics, he does talk a bit about how he approached the material.
I'm so familiar with [King’s] work and I’ve read so many of his books so many times over the years that it was a just a really comfortable thing to be able to work with his material. He gives you so much material to work with. There’s an abundance of it. So it’s not a book where you have to generate new material and make it work for a movie…I just focused on the things that I felt strongly about, that I have strong memories about, that are evocative to me even when I read it now. You just have an internal interest meter. The Stand is about so many things – you could make ten to fifteen different movies and focus on a different aspect of it. I just focused on the things that were more important to me and felt essential to me and were based in the characters.
The film is still firmly in the pre-production phase, but Boone anticipates shooting to being next year – possible in the spring. So hopefully we'll be hearing more details about potential casting and other decisions in the coming months.
