The Stand: Stephen King Loves The Latest Draft Of The Script

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

The StandWe’ve heard some concerning news lately regarding the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s massive post-apocalyptic tome The Stand, specifically about a potential epic Lord of the Rings style battle that could take place at the end, supplanting the conclusion from the book. That was, however, an older draft of the script. King himself has apparently had a chance to read the most recent version, and loves it.

After serving as a revolving door for directors like Ben Affleck and Scott Cooper, The Stand finally settled on Josh Boone, who recently helmed the weepy teen romance The Fault in Our Stars (which, despite the title, has nothing to do with science fiction in the slightest). He was also tasked with delivering a new draft of the script, no easy task considering massive size and scope of the 1978 novel, which includes dozens of characters, numerous settings, and ton of other elements, all of which need to fit into a single movie.

Talking to Collider, Boone said:

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.

Getting King on board sounds like a big step in the right direction to us. And this three hour version is also supposedly going to be R-rated, which should be another huge sigh of relief for fans. There’s enough of King’s trademark horror, violence, and more that there’s no way to do the work true justice if you watered it down to PG-13 in hopes of attracting a wider audience. Besides, King readers have always skewed a little older anyway.

Though it’s already attracted big name talent like Affleck, Boone may be the ideal choice to helm The Stand. Though Fault is only his second feature directing job, and one that seems, thematically and content wise, far removed from the grim wasteland of King’s book, one thing he has is passion. He wants this job, he wants to be there, and as a die hard King fan, this may be close to a dream job for him.

Read what he has to say on matter and judge for yourself:

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.

He makes a solid case for being involved with this movie.

There’s still no real timetable for The Stand, but with a director and script in place, it sounds like the rest of the pieces may start coming together soon. We’ve even heard rumblings that Matthew McConaughey is at the top of their list to play the villainous Randall Flagg. But to be honest, after the run he’s been on recently, he’s probably at the top of every casting list in Hollywood right now, and we don’t actually know if he has any interest in this whatsoever. We’ll let you know that, and anything else we find out about The Stand.