Stephen King’s The Stand Will Be Four Separate Movies

Stephen King’s “The Stand” will be spread out across four separate feature films, director and writer Josh Boone confirmed this week, ending months of speculation on how King’s sprawling saga would translate to the big screen.

Boone spilled the beans while chatting on Kevin Smith’s “Hollywood Babble-On” Podcast, SlashFilm reported. According to Boone, he originally wrote a screenplay for a single The Stand film that would have run three hours.

“So what happened is the script gets finished, I write it in like five months, everybody loves it, King loves it, $87 million is what it was budgeted at, really expensive for a horror drama that doesn’t have set pieces,” Boone said.

But Warner Bros. loved Boone’s writing so much, they wanted more of it—four times the amount, to be exact. After all, almost every franchise film needs a Pt.2 these days. Warner Bros. also did away with Boone’s projected $87 million budget, giving him stacks of more cash (he didn’t disclose the exact amount) to make The Stand a true blockbuster.

“So I think we are going to do like four movies,” Boone said. “I can’t tell you anything about how we’re going to do them, or what’s going to be in which movie. I’ll just say we are going to do four movies, and we’re going to do The Stand at the highest level you can do it at, with a cast that’s going to blow people’s minds.”

Boone said that he hopes to start filming early next year, so official casting announcements shouldn’t be too far off. And with Boone already promising that his adaptation will be rated “R,” it seems like he’s determined to honor King’s source material as best he can.