Director Josh Boone Discusses Delays On Stephen King’s The Stand

For a while now, things have been threatening to go huge on the Stephen King movie front, with adaptations of a number of his biggest works in development for the big screen.

However, at the time of writing the only major King adaptation to properly get underway is ‘The Dark Tower,’ with the movie versions of ‘It’ and ‘The Stand’ having rather more difficulty.

Producer Roy Lee promised in February that ‘It’ will definitely go before cameras this year - but things have been rather quieter regarding ‘The Stand.’

Now, director Josh Boone (’The Fault In Our Stars’) has shed a little light on where things stand (sorry) on the massive dystopian fantasy, and the problems the film has faced in getting off the ground.

Boone tells Nightmare Magazine, “The reason The Stand hasn’t been made yet is because it’s expensive. It’s a problem of perception, I think.

“We really are attempting to revive the idea of the elevated horror film—movies like The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining—A-list films with A-list casts. The 1980s really killed this idea because studios realized you could make horror films for dirt cheap and make a killing.

“In theory, every studio wants to make The Stand. It’s a bona fide American classic. It should be an event movie. A big, serious-minded epic with an awe-inspiring cast that is as faithful as possible to King’s narrative and intentions. This should be The Godfather of post-apocalyptic epics.”

Boone was brought on board ‘The Stand’ by Warner Bros when the previously attached director Ben Affleck dropped out to star in ‘Batman V Superman’ - which goes some way to showing how long the film has been stuck in development hell.

Nor was Affleck the first director linked to the film at Warner Bros, as David Yates and Scott Cooper had previously been attached.

However, Boone goes on to suggest the key reason ‘The Stand’ has not yet been made is studio disinterest; indeed, he seems to imply Warner Bros may not want to make the film at all anymore.

“I adapted the book and have King’s blessing. We got that awe-inspiring cast. But WB didn’t want to spend what it would actually cost to make the movie.

“To have a real conversation about making this film at a level that is appropriate for the book King wrote is an 85-to-100-million-dollar conversation, which from where I’m sitting sounds like a no-brainer considering the mind-numbing nonsense that studios spend 250 million on.”

The director goes on to say “my hope is that we’ll go make that movie with Lionsgate,” and stresses, “The Stand is the movie of a lifetime, so I’m completely content waiting until someone gives us exactly what we need to do it right rather than to compromise.”

Boone also says the plan is for a single three-hour movie, although he had previously suggested it might be made as several films, and/or preceded by a TV mini-series.

In the meantime, Boone confirms he also has designs on directing another King adaptation, ‘Revival,’ which he says is “good to go.”

Not unlike ‘It,’ ‘The Stand’ is one of King’s biggest novels (well over a thousand pages) and was previously brought to the screen as a TV mini-series in the 1990s.

Picture Credit: Doubleday, WENN

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