The film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand had been safely gestating with no major news outbreaks since June’s announcement that The Fault In Our Stars’ Josh Boone was taking over as director. Since then, the news had been contained to producers expressing a desire to cast Matthew McConaughey, and the unsurprising decision to expand the adaptation into four films.
But attempts to quarantine major Stand news seem to have completely unraveled, with the The Guardian reporting that McConaughey has been cast as main villain Randall Flagg, a role that would span all four chapters. But until any official word, his casting—like the military creating ebola in an underground bunker—is still a rumor at this point.
Stephen King’s expansive novel chronicles a super flu pandemic that wipes out most of the world’s population. A dispersed 1 percent of American survivors eventually converges into two groups, aligned respectively to good and evil. Flagg is the supernatural, psychotic stranger who beckons the worst of humanity to seek him out among the shattered remains of Las Vegas. The role would certainly be a nice bookend to McConaughey’s recent gig tempting Americans to follow him on different type of nihilistic quest.