There are few more timely shows currently in production than CBS’ upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand. The novel depicts a world in which a pandemic has killed most of the human population, leaving the remaining survivors to establish a new world order. Josh Boone, who will be directing the first and last episodes of the new season, has promised it will embrace the R-rated content of King’s book and here’s what he recently told /Film about doing The Stand’s darkness justice:
[We] thought about like Close Encounters and the way those Spielberg movies felt in the ‘70s, and crazy Oliver Stone movies in the ‘90s. Kind of merging those things to tell this epic, dark fantasy. I think it’ll be really cool. The main thing we have going for us that the original didn’t have going for it is that we can really do it at a really high level in terms of the R-rated content and things like that which just weren’t possible then.
Ok, so reality hasn’t quite reached the extremities of The Stand yet (let’s hope it never does). But it’s an odd quirk nonetheless that this second adaptation should finally make it to production amidst a pandemic. The last one, an ABC miniseries featuring an all-star cast, was broadcast in 1994.
Luckily for fans looking forward to the new show, filming was completed right before the pandemic started to bite. Many others had to curtail their latest seasons early (Batwoman, The Flash, The Walking Dead), but this wrapped just in time. This and the still-to-be-aired 2020 Christmas special of Doctor Who, that is. Still cursing my luck there.
Excited that The Stand will stand by (sorry) the R-rated content of the novel? Drop a comment with your own thoughts below. Whatever the horror – and it will be horror, given that it’s Stephen King – awaiting us, it’s bound to be close to the bone. Even a pandemic comedy as innocuous as Shaun of the Dead has accrued a disconcerting undertone that was previously absent. It’s actually only just struck me that The Last of Us Part II experienced exactly the same kind of launch I was describing in this story. Never one to miss the obvious.
