Josh Boone updates on The Stand

After year upon year of speculation, an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand is finally on the move, with director Josh Boone explaining just what we can expect from the forthcoming epic.

“I finished writing the script maybe a month ago,” says Boone. “Stephen [ King ] absolutely loved it. It’s, I think, the first script ever approved by him. [ I t'll be ] a single version movie of The Stand , three hours, [ and ] it hews very closely to the novel.”

“It’s not a book where you have to generate new material and make it work for a movie. He writes so cinematically and his characters are so sharply drawn, you don’t have to change much… I just made it work within the confines of what a single film can be.”

Naturally that involves plenty of cuts, although as a huge fan of King’s work, Boone felt confident in selecting what was and wasn’t important for the movie…

“ The Stand is about so many things - you could make ten to fifteen different movies and focus on a different aspect of it… I just focused on the things that I felt strongly about, that I have strong memories about, that are evocative to me even when I read it now.”

So when can we expect cameras to begin rolling? Well, not for a little while yet, but a start date is at least in sight…

“It takes a long time to prep a film like that,” says Boone. “Six to eight months. I don’t imagine we would shoot the movie until next spring at the earliest, and we’re still early in the process. I’m still meeting actors and having budget meetings and all that.”

Still a way to go then, but given the amount of false starts this project has suffered, it’s just exciting to hear that things are finally happening…