Stephen Kings The Stand Is Standing Still For A Bit Longer

The Stand has had a long journey to the big screen, and sadly it’s going to be a bit longer. While the picture still has a director attached (The Fault In Our Stars Josh Boone), the rights to the book have expired. Warner Bros. previously held the rights, but once those lapsed it falls back into CBS Films.

So far they haven’t said what they will do with the rights, but whatever they do it will have to wait until Josh Boone finishes shooting another Stephen King property, Revival. Revival came together much quicker, so once he finishes that project it will at least be 2017 before The Stand can actually start shooting.

While there are many factors as to why The Stand has taken so long, once of the issues is just how to fit it into a theatrical release. As Roy Lee (producer) said in his dialog with Collider, it has gone through many forms, including at one point being accompanied with an 8 episode mini-series.

“There was definitely talk about doing that but the logistics made it very difficult to try to do a worldwide launch of a movie when the TV component would not necessarily be released at the same time worldwide. So it became a logistic nightmare to try to figure that out, so that plan was abandoned.”

“That’s why there was this discussion about going to HBO or Netflix to try to do a series that launched before a movie, but we’ve been opened to everything just to make it work. I think TV would be great but Stephen King believes that his version—the miniseries that was done before is a very good interpretation of the novel.”

As for the length and split of the movie, he went into more detail.

“That’s why we’ve been experimenting with trying to see what the one movie would look like. If you do the one movie, you obviously have to take out a big portion of the book, so trying to balance what to keep and what to cut out was a long process because there’s so much to go through. So that’s why it’s been a long process. Right now it’s written as two movies.”

While all this back and forth is keeping the film from surfacing as soon as fans would like, at least it shows they care. Hopefully after Revival is done Josh Boone can finally make this film a reality.