People have been complaining about a movie adaptation of The Stand for years, mapping out their ideal version. It's gotta be rated R, they say. It's gotta be endlessly long, they say. No compromises for The Stand, which has sold millions of copies and thrilled entire generations. But what if we said that R-rated, three hour The Stand was coming? Wouldn't you be thrilled?
Director Josh Boone is out promoting his latest film, The Fault In Our Stars, and he sat down with Vulture to discuss his apparently three-hour, R-rated take on The Stand.
"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!'"
When it comes to most books, the word fans love to use is "miniseries." Many aren't satisfied by a movie's ability to capture the prose and intricacies of the book, especially so for Stephen King's The Stand. Fans worry that director Josh Boone isn't going to be given the proper license to expand upon King's work, an 823-page monster that has enthralled audiences for decades. But from the sounds of it, The Stand is getting the carte blanche treatment.
Boone's freedom suggests that the studio is very high on The Fault In Our Stars, which this weekend is tracking at close to $40 million, theoretically handing the stuffing to Tom Cruise's Edge Of Tomorrow. Still, that's a lot of faith to show in him: were Ben Affleck and Scott Cooper's visions going to be so ambitious?
Of course, Boone is also a part of King's inner circle: the filmmaker is so close with the writer that he got him to cameo in an earlier film, Stuck In Love. You wonder how much pull King actually has on the film: anyone who knows King knows that he keeps his friends close. That led to Mick Garris being the man for several King adaptations, even though Garris is a relatively undistinguished filmmaker who was behind Sleepwalkers and the miniseries adaptation of The Shining.
Garris also directed the TV version of The Stand, however, and while that version was compromised, it is considered one of the better King adaptations, an epic six hour event loaded with stars like Gary Sinese, Molly Ringwold and Rob Lowe – this was an age where most movie stars didn't do TV, so that counts as a high wattage group of actors. Regardless, that's not an incredibly high bar for Boone to jump over, hopefully he pulls it off.
