Thanks a lot, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Part 1 and 2. Ever since Warner Bros. cracked the code on splitting J.K. Rowling’s final Potter novel into a pair of films, we’ve been saddled with increasingly expansive adaptations—The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1 and 2 were based on a single book. The Hobbit, a single-volume prequel to The Lord Of The Rings, is a film trilogy of its own. So it should be little surprise that Warner Bros. is adapting the three acts of Stephen King’s novel The Stand into four films, four being a trilogy adjusted for inflation.
To be fair, Stephen King has already created a precedent for stuffing more content into Stephen King projects. The original 1978 edition of The Stand was updated in 1980 and again in 1990, when 400 previously unpublished pages were restored for The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition, which will probably double as the subtitle for an eventual Blu-ray deluxe box set.
Directing duties on the project have changed hands more than once, but now reside with Josh Boone (The Fault In Our Stars). Boone earlier rebuffed the notion that The Stand needed to be more than a single film, so this news potentially casts doubt on his insistence that the film earn a R rating.
The Stand was previously adapted as a miniseries for television in the ’90s, featuring Gary Sinise, Bill “Dauber!” Fagerbakke, Laura San Giacomo, Jamey Sheridan, and Rob Lowe (playing “Deaf Rob Lowe,” not “Painfully Awkward Rob Lowe,” so calm down Shy Bladder Support Group).
The Stand chronicles the outbreak and aftermath of a manufactured superflu virus that eventually kills over 99 percent of humanity. In the wake of the global pandemic, U.S. survivors align themselves behind a sweet old lady and grinning psychopath, eventually forcing a showdown between the forces of good and evil.