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SYFY WIRE the stand

Josh Boone will adapt Stephen King's The Stand as a limited series for CBS All Access

By Matthew Jackson
The Stand Book Cover

Stephen King's epic novel The Stand will be adapted for the small screen once again.

Writer/director Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) will adapt the massive post-apocalyptic saga into a 10-episode limited series for the CBS All Access streaming service, the network announced Wednesday at its TCA panel in Beverly Hills. Boone, a longtime King fan who's been circling The Stand for some time, will serve as both writer and director.

“I’m excited and so very pleased that The Stand is going to have a new life on this exciting new platform,” King said in a statement, per The Wrap. “The people involved are men and women who know exactly what they’re doing; the scripts are dynamite. The result bids to be something memorable and thrilling. I believe it will take viewers away to a world they hope will never happen.”

Originally published in 1978, The Stand is a sprawling story that follows a group of survivors after a superflu that wipes out most of the U.S. population is accidentally released from a government facility. With nearly everyone they know and love dead, the various survivors find themselves swept up in a supernatural struggle for the future of humanity, with the good souls gathering to an old woman in Nebraska named Mother Abigail, and the nastier souls flocking to Las Vegas, where a dark man named Randall Flagg waits and gathers followers.

The Stand is among King's most ambitious novels, and was re-released in an uncut version in 1990 that clocked in at over 1,000 pages. It is frequently cited by fans as among his best works, and was previously adapted into an acclaimed miniseries, starring Gary Sinise and Molly Ringwald and directed by Mick Garris, on ABC in 1994.

Boone has been trying to get his version of the story off the ground for several years now, initially intending to adapt the book as a feature film, or possibly multiple films. In 2016, producer Roy Lee said the project was in a "holding pattern" as they tried to figure out the corrected format for the story, and now it seems The Stand has finally found a home where it can really spread out and fill the scope intended by King's book.

(With reporting by Tara Bennett)