Ten-hour miniseries of The Stand on CBS All Access

[Cixelsyd]

So, four movies now?

http://smodcast.com/episodes/hollywo...-in-our-stand/

I was listening to this today and got really excited. Boone came across as a really interesting guy and it was clear that he was a HUGE fan of King. He described growing up reading the novels and his deep knowledge and respect for King's work was obvious.

When he was talkiing about The Stand, he said he actually turned it down multiple times, because he thought it couldn't be done right with a single movie, but was persuaded to take it on after his agent sent him a couple scripts that had been floating around. Boone said the scripts had the film as a summer blockbuster and he knew that was all wrong. The book isn't about big action set pieces in his mind, but about the characters. (VERY GOOD SIGN)

He also said that his first draft was over three hours and that he had everyone sold on the film with an $87 million budget and that King loved the script. However, he then said the studio actually came to him and told him they wanted to go bigger and offered him 4 films with the budget for a top flight cast.

After listening to this interview, I am sold on the project and I am completely sold on the director. This guy GETS IT. He's talented and he's a fan of the material. I'm excited now!

PS - He's also a huge Tower Junkie. He told a story about sending the first three DT novels to King as a teenager and getting them back with a continuous letter from King to him in the covers -- the kind gesture from King was apparently enough to convince his born again christian parents to lift their previous ban on King novels in the house.

[Jon]

http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/step...adaptation-748

In an interview with Collider, writer/director Josh Boone revealed he's finished the script for THE STAND adaptation, and says author Stephen King really enjoyed Boone's take on his novel.

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. It was such an amazing process. 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 just a really comfortable thing to be able to work with his material. He gives you so much great 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. He writes so cinematically and his characters are so sharply drawn. You don’t have to change much. [You use] a lot of structural things to condense a thousand pages into a three-hour movie but it’s still at heart his material. I just made it work within the confines of what a single film can be.

It's interesting Josh Boone says new material doesn't need to be created to make THE STAND work as a movie, since David Kajganich's draft of the adaptation had a very different ending compared to the novel. Sounds like Boone might not be using Kajganich's ending for the film.

Josh Boone goes on to talk about deciding what to leave out from King's book for the movie, and says spring of next year is the earliest production might start on the project.

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 focussed on the things that were more important to me and felt essential to me and were based in the characters...It takes a long time to prep a film like that. Six to eight months. I don’t imagine we would shoot the movie until next Spring at the earliest. And we’re still early in the process. I’m still meeting actors and having budget meetings and all that.

If Boone has already been meeting with actors for THE STAND, maybe one of them was Matthew McConaughey, who last month we learned might be being eyed by Warner Bros. to play Randall Flagg in the adaption. Boone previously promised "an amazing A-list cast across the board" for his movie, and I'm really hoping McConaughey does end up playing the villain.

Josh Boone's THE STAND doesn't currently have a release date. When do you think would be a good time for it to hit theaters? During the summer? Flu season?

So this implies that they are going to use the unabridged version...too cool!!!

[herbertwest]

If the project is innovating, I wouldn't be surprised if, somehow, the 4 movies would be based on 4 different characters?
What would you think of that?

[Jon]

mm...Which four?

I suspect that would never tell the story.

[herbertwest]

Dunno.
Or something like :
1 movie from the point of view of the Good People. One from Randall Flagg... then the two point of view would match in the last 2 movies and they would complete the story?

[skyofcrack]

I'm assuming the first film will be called Captain Trips. Boone said that the Lincoln tunnel scene would not be in the first picture.

[Merlin1958]

Four movies seems like too much IMHO Three, yes. Four, no JMHO

[skyofcrack]

Four movies seems like too much IMHO Three, yes. Four, no JMHO

If each of the four films is 2 hours, that's only 2 hours longer than the TV mini-series.

4 x 2.5 hours seems about right. 250 pages x 4.

[Anubis2347]

If they can take a short book like The Hobbit and turn it into 3 (Long) movies, surely they can turn The Stand into 4.

[webstar1000]

If they can take a short book like The Hobbit and turn it into 3 (Long) movies, surely they can turn The Stand into 4.

True. Not opposed to 4. I think 3 is just what we are used to and been told for so many years.... Just hope it is done really well...

[Merlin1958]

If they can take a short book like The Hobbit and turn it into 3 (Long) movies, surely they can turn The Stand into 4.

If they can take a short book like The Hobbit and turn it into 3 (Long) movies, surely they can turn The Stand into 4.

True. Not opposed to 4. I think 3 is just what we are used to and been told for so many years.... Just hope it is done really well...

Well, actually, Jackson utilized the Hobbit, as well as the extensive appendices in LOTR to create his film. One problem, King has always had in translating his novels to the screen is that a lot of his great stuff just doesn't translate as well to film. In film, sometimes less is more. So much of the story we love comes from a form of narrative that doesn't work in films all the time. This is all just MHO.

[skyofcrack]

The key to a great film is:

1. Great script
2. Passionate filmmakers
3. Great casting

Most of the bad King films lacked all three of these.

[Cixelsyd]

The key to a great film is:

1. Great script
2. Passionate filmmakers
3. Great casting

Most of the bad King films lacked all three of these.

In that recent Smith interview, Boone spends a lot of time talking about why previous adaptations of King's works have fallen flat and he points repeatedly to "tone."

His thoughts were that everything for a good movie were already included in the material by King, but they aren't used by the film makers for one reason or another. He talked about Kubrick's Shining and how great it was as a film, but then said that the book really hadn't been done by Kubrick because it leaves out much of the struggling with alcoholism and the guilt over breaking Danny's arm, which underlies the entire plot and why the hotel can prey upon this weakness. He also pointed to Christine and how the entire love/tragedy/sadness angle was left out and it became simply a killer car movie.

That's why he says he is so against a "blockbuster" Stand with a bunch of action set pieces (he pointed to World War Z here) and instead wants to make a version that is as true to the novel as he can make it, with the focus being on the characters and the relationships between them.

[Jon]

Dunno.
Or something like :
1 movie from the point of view of the Good People. One from Randall Flagg... then the two point of view would match in the last 2 movies and they would complete the story?

A good idea. Much would be lost but then again, much will be lost...it is a movie. That may work.

[mae]

I'm surprised they didn't discuss him doing The Dark Tower maybe

[Robert Fulman]

I think they should do a Stephen King themed movie universe (like Marvel's), with a single actor playing RF across various stories. That would be cool.

[skyofcrack]

I just watched Boone's Stuck In Love. A pretty good film with some nice performances. I had no idea King had made a (voice) appearance and that one of the characters is a huge fan and has a bookcase full of SK's novels including the S/L Dark Tower books and TWTTK artist AND limited. He also has Dark Tower art all over his walls. He gives his girlfriend a copy of CD's GE of It.

[Jon]

I think they should do a Stephen King themed movie universe (like Marvel's), with a single actor playing RF across various stories. That would be cool.

Good idea...start with Eyes of the Dragon.

[herbertwest]

Josh Boone is planned to direct a XMEN movie spin off : The New Mutants

[webstar1000]

Josh Boone is planned to direct a XMEN movie spin off : The New Mutants

Heard that... I wonder if that will be before the Stand.. the article I seen mentioned the Stand... but not whether it would be filmed before or after...

[herbertwest]

I wonder too. So far, Josh's name has been confirmed for The Stand, Lisey, Xmen.
I thought that the stand project was back on tracks, and I am sure that the Xmen project will probably require focus for about 2 years.... so where does his other projects stand in this?

[mae]

http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/new...ion-miniseries

While things haven’t been going so well for New Line’s planned big screen take on Stephen King’s IT, the future of Warner Bros. Pictures’ adaptation of the author’s massive 1978 novel The Stand is looking bigger and brighter than ever! According to a story today at The Wrap, the current plan is to, in an unprecedented move, begin the story on television. An eight-part Showtime miniseries event is being eyed, which would set up the story and its characters to culminate in director Josh Boone’s feature film.

Previously adapted as a television miniseries in 1994, The Stand tells the story of a full-scale apocalypse, driven by the accidental release of a biological weapon and the ensuing struggle of good versus evil carried out by the world’s final survivors.

Previous reports suggested that Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey was being sought to play the story’s villain, the demonic figure Randall Flagg. Apropos of nothing, King’s book itself recently made a brief-but-memorable cameo opposite the star in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.

Boone is said to be a longtime fan of King and even gave the novelist a cameo in his 2012 film, Stuck in Love. He’s also already attached to 20th Century Fox’s upcoming X-Men spinoff, The New Mutants. He’s also attached to helm the Universal Pictures project The Vampire Chronicles, based on Anne Rice’s famous series of novels.

[CyberGhostface]

I've said it for Dark Tower and I'll say it here... I don't think a television to movie adaptation is a good idea unless you can find a way to make the two work independently of one another. I do think eight episodes and a movie is better than DT's proposed 'a movie then a TV show then a movie' but I'd rather see it as an R-rated film trilogy.

[Johnny Alien]

I've said it for Dark Tower and I'll say it here... I don't think a television to movie adaptation is a good idea unless you can find a way to make the two work independently of one another. I do think eight episodes and a movie is better than DT's proposed 'a movie then a TV show then a movie' but I'd rather see it as an R-rated film trilogy.

With the Dark Tower I would bet that the TV stuff would be all the flashback stuff (Wizard and Glass). That way they would not need to pay the main actor salaries by using a whole new cast and the movies would not hinge on you watching the show although it would be greatly enhanced.

[Bev Vincent]

With DT, the original plan was to focus on characters on TV and action on the big screen.