We’ve all encountered books that’ve proved impossible to get through for one reason or another. For a lot of people, it’s those infernal “classics” your English professor was always going about: Finnegans Wake, To The Lighthouse. For others, it’s anything written by Dan Brown (for completely different reasons). But for Ben Affleck, it’s Stephen King‘s post-apocalyptic novel The Stand that’s causing him a whole bunch of trouble, what with its 800+ pages, layered characters and multiple plot strands. Gosh, it’s almost as if books weren’t made to be adapted into movies or something.
For those who presumed by the title of this article that Affleck was, just, you know, struggling to get through a book so many of us have read, it’s important that we let you know that Affleck has been slated to direct the adaptation. Here’s what he had to say recently on having a hard time with the source material:
“Right now we’re having a very hard time. But I like the idea—it’s like The Lord of the Rings in America. And it’s about how we would reinvent ourselves as a society. If we started all over again, what would we do?”
That’s some mighty keen observin’, Ben, given that Stephen King actually wrote The Stand as an American version of The Lord of the Rings in the first place. So what we’ve learned, anyway, is despite the fact that we were overjoyed in the fact that one of King’s best novels was getting a film adaptation, there hasn’t been much progress at all. None, in fact.
For those of you who have never heard of The Stand, presumably avoiding it by accident after mistaking it for a John Grisham thriller, it’s set in a post-apocalyptic America in which more than 99% of the population have died due to a flu-like virus that has swept the planet. The survivors rally together on two sides and come together to battle it out in Las Vegas.
So, is Ben Affleck our man? Will he… take The Stand? The verdict is yours etc.
Source: The Huffington Post
