Stephen King wants to be everywhere. His books prove to be a great source of stories not only for TV shows but for full fledged movie adaptations as well. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining comes to mind yet there is still place in the medium for more King awesomness.His most recent TV adaptation of his book “Under the Dome” is going strong on its second season and is not letting up. Now, however, word is that one of his other books is moving onto greener and bigger pastures with The Stand. At first, the adaptation was ordered only as a single movie but now it seems that not one, not two but four movies will tell the story of Stephen King’s characters. Such a big move was made public by director Josh Boone( The Fault in Our Stars) on Kevin Smith’s Hollywood Babble-On podcast.
The director said that the potential for Stephen King’s book can be achieved by abandoning the one feature film formula: “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” going as far as saying that they “have already been talking to lots of people, and have people on board in certain roles that people don’t know about. We’re looking to go into production next year, maybe in the spring.”
There was an older version of The Stand which premiered in 1994 on ABC in the form of a TV miniseries. In it starred well known actors such as Gary Sinise( CSI: New York) and Laura San Giacomo (Veronica Mars). The story behind The Stand is about a virus which decimates the world with only small pockets of immune people surviving the epidemic. It sounds like it’s been done a thousand times before but Stephen King always knows how to flip the tables with the introduction of supernatural overtones. Big names are also attached to the project with Matthew McConaughey being in talks to play the villain. The movie is still in development and there’s currently no release date for the first film.