Josh Boone Discusses His Series Adaptation of Stephen King's THE STAND and Expanding on The Story
Director Josh Boone (The New Mutants) has spent seven years working on developing an adaptation of Stephen King’s epic good vs. evil novel, The Stand. It started out as a four-part film project but it ended up evolving into a ten-episode miniseries which is coming to CBS All Access.
During a recent interview with Comingsoon, Boone, who directed the first and final episodes, talked about his work on the upcoming series and also opened up about the previous attempts that were made to bring the story to life. Before Boone jumped on board, directors George A. Romero, Scott Cooper and Ben Affleck had tried to get it off the ground. When talking about the work they did on it, Boone said:
“Getting to read Scott Cooper’s draft was awesome, it’s very different from the book but it’s very cool and it’s very Scott Cooper. There were some other drafts, like there was the Affleck drafts, I don’t think he was the writer of it but I know he was involved in the drafts. I read some stuff like that, I have always wanted to read the George A. Romero version, I’ve seen some storyboards of it, his Lincoln Tunnel storyboards. One of the best things we had is somebody who’s worked with Peter for years is our first AD, Nick Mastandrea, who worked on every George A. Romero movie, all the early Pittsburgh ones and through the ’80s. He was like horror royalty, so I had as many of those guys from when they made real movies with practical effects as I could.”
When talking about the tenth and final episode of the series, Boone said that King provided the series with a coda that wasn’t included in the novel and teased what fans can expect in the expansion of the story:
“King wrote us a lovely coda, which is sort of the story he’s wanted to tell for a long time that takes place immediately after The Stand that provides an additional resolution for Franny, who’s sort of not involved in the climax of the book, which I thought was really, really brilliant and a deeply moving script. I was so moved to get to go make it.”
I do love that the series will actually expand on the story of the book and go beyond where the story ends in the book. Here’s the synopsis for the series that was previously released:
The ten-episode series adaptation reveals that this is the way the world ends: “with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after, a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides — or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail — and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.”
The Stand features a fantastic cast that includes James Marsden (Westworld) as Stu Redman, Amber Heard (Aquaman) as Nadine Cross, Alexander Skarsgård (Big Little Lies) as Randall Flagg, Greg Kinnear (As Good as It Gets) as Glen Bateman, Whoopi Goldberg (Nobody’s Fool) as Mother Abigail, Odessa Young (Assassination Nation) as Frannie Goldsmith, Nat Wolff (Paper Towns) as Lloyd Henreid, Henry Zaga (The New Mutants) as Nick Andros, Jovan Adepo (Overlord) as Larry Underwood, Owen Teague (IT) as Harold Lauder, Brad William Henke (Orange Is the New Black) as Tom Cullen, Daniel Sunjata (Rescue Me) as Cobb, a new character, Katherine McNamara (Arrow) as Julie Lawry, Eion Bailey (Band of Brothers) as Teddy Weizak, Hamish Linklater (Legion) as Dr. Ellis and Heather Graham (The Hangover) as Rita Blakemoor.
Boone wrote the series along with Ben Cavell (SEAL Team) and King wrote the tenth and final episode of the series. You can check out some previously released images from the series here.