Stephen King has written over 60 novels and novellas in his long career, as well as over 200 short stories, yet Hollywood’s obsession with adapting the same ones over and over again has reached a new level with the news that one of King’s longest single-volume novels is about to be remade just five years since it was last adapted.
This year, King fans will be terrified by Pennywise the Clown all over again in a prequel series to the hit movie adaptation of It, have already seen Salem’s Lot, The Monkey and The Life of Chuck, and have a future littered with more King projects like The Long Walk, Cujo, Carrie, The Dark Tower, Fairy Tale and many more. Now, though, one of the most unexpected and questionable adaptations has been revealed by The Hollywood Report, with word that Road House director Doug Liman is attached to helm a single-movie version of The Stand.
While King’s Constant Readers wipe up the mess they just made by spitting their coffee out, here is a little reminder for those not completely familiar with The Stand as to why this seems like a completely ridiculous idea.
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The Stand is a massive book, so big that King initially had to cut out around a fifth of the novel to get it published in 1978 (although he would release a full uncut version over a decade later). The sprawling story of a post-apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by a mystery virus known as Captain Trips, all seemingly orchestrated by one of King’s recurring antagonists, Randall Flagg, is the ultimate tale of good versus evil and clocks in at well over 1000 pages. For this reason, its previous adaptations have both been miniseries, and even then, there was a lot cut from the story.
According to the report, Liman will be teaming up with Paramount Pictures for the project, and will have Tyler Thompson producing, whom he worked with on Tom Cruise’s American Made. It has also been stipulated that there are no plans for this adaptation to be a multiple-movie deal, and it will be a single one-off movie with a “particular take.”
Can ‘The Stand’ Possibly Be Made Into a Single Movie?
While Stephen King has recently made history by allowing other writers to write new stories based in the world of The Stand, the curated collection of which will be released in August, the idea of making The Stand into a movie that will not require a lunch break seems almost impossible to comprehend. If Liman’s movie is planning on telling the whole story, then the result would be so truncated that it is hard to see it having any kind of appeal to King fans, and would likely go the way of the ill-fated 2017 version of The Dark Tower.
This could mean that the movie will just tell a very specific chapter of the story, focusing on either a certain character or group and forming its own snapshot narrative from the novel. For now, fans can only speculate on which it will be, as the movie is just heading out to writers now, so is likely to be a couple of years away at least. With The Stand already being made into two TV series, the latest being released to a mixed reception in 2020, whether we really need any new version of the story is very doubtful indeed.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
The Stand
- Release Date
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2020 – 2021-00-00
- Network
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ABC
- Directors
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Mick Garris
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