The Fault in Our Stars director Josh Boone is currently busy developing Warner Bros.’ long-gestating adaptation of Stephen King’s epic post-apocalyptic novel The Stand, and during a chat with Collider he has now provided an update on his progress, confirming that the script is complete, and that it will remain faithful to King’s original novel (or as faithful as a three-hour movie can be)…
“I finished writing the script maybe a month ago. Stephen absolutely loved it. It’s, I think, the first script ever approved by him. [It’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.”
As for when we can expect filming to begin, Boone stated that: “It takes a long time to prep a film like that. 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.”
So, it looks like casting is in its early stages, with Boone previously revealing that he’d like to see Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club) and Christian Bale (American Hustle) as Stu Redman and Randall Flagg respectively.