Director Josh Boone has given an update on his adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand, which may be set to premiere on CBS All Access later this year. In a recent interview, Boone discussed his influences in making this series while stating that it falls under an R-Rating.
The Stand managed to finish filming just before COVID-19 shut down film and TV productions worldwide. Since the novel begins with plague wiping out most of humanity, this series couldn’t be more eerily timely.
“I know, right? It’s one of the those things. Will you be pandemic-ed out by then? But so much of it isn’t really about that. It’s so much more what comes after [the pandemic]. But yeah, we’re excited about it. Couldn’t have gotten a better cast or a better group of people to make it,” said Boone, via SlashFilm.com.
Boone is correct, as the novel mainly follows the plague’s survivors when they get swept up in a biblical struggle between good and evil. While heading this ambitious project, Boone claims he directed the first and last episode, with King writing the latter with new finale for his sprawling epic.
Boone claims that his miniseries with combine elements of Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone. “We thought about like Close Encounters and the way those Spielberg movies felt in ’70s, and crazy Oliver Stone movies in the ’90s,” said Boone. “Kind of merging those things to tell this epic dark fantasy. I think it’ll be really cool. The main thing we have going for us that the original didn’t have going for it is that we can really do it at a really high level in terms of the R-rated content and things like that which just weren’t possible then.”
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This isn’t the first time Boone has worked on a Stephen King adaptation. He previously worked on putting the novel Revival on the big screen. His project fell through, but Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan is currently set to helm the film.
“I love that book, but you’ve gotta understand, I put King in my first movie as himself, I had written him a letter when I was a kid. I’ve told this story so many times, ad nauseam, probably, but I was raised by a very religious family, and I used to have kind of a sneak reading Stephen King. My mom would burn his books in the fireplace. So I wrote him a letter when I was young, he signed some books for me, I went back to him years later, put him in my first movie, Stuck in Love, as a cameo as himself, and so over the next however many years after that, I dabbled in a couple different Stephen King books and carried The Stand from Warner Bros. to CBS over the course of five or six years. It was really less which specific thing, and like, one of these things I’m going to make. Once I’d made The Stand, I’m not going to immediately go out and make something Stephen King-related, you know? It took so long to make that one. I loved Revival as well, but I love Mike Flanagan, and I think he’ll do a fantastic job on that one.”
Considering how this miniseries is a passion project for Boone, we can expect it to be a faithful adaptation with a lot of heart. The Stand will star James Marsden, Amber Heard, Greg Kinnear, Odessa Young, Henry Zaga, Whoopi Goldberg, Jovan Adepo, Owen Teague, Brad William Henke, Marilyn Manson, Alexander Skarsgård, Nat Wolff, Katherine McNamara, and Heather Graham.
