Forums Horror Movie Talk
From Harry Potter To Stephen KIng? David Yates Possibly Directing The Stand

It's been reported that an adaption of Stephen King's The Stand is going to happen at some point. The novel was made into a mini-series back in 1994 but now is headed for the big screen. HitFix has reported that Harry Potter director, David Yates is posbly stepping in to bring this novel to the big screen with Steve Kloves as screenwriter. The novel tells the story of a biological weapon caung a full-scale apocalypse, which follows by the battle and struggle between the survivors.

I honestly don't see how they could make a successful theater-release film out of The Stand. It's not just that the novel is so long, but so much is important to the plot that I can't imagine what could be cut out. The miniseries was decent; why not leave well enough alone?

Really don't see how this could be done effectively with a typical run time.

It's going to be a very short stand.

I read somewhere else that this isn't going to be just one movie . . . posbly a trilogy or a longer series, hence why they want to tap Yates who has experience directing a series of films that were adapted from books.

I read somewhere else that this isn't going to be just one movie . . . posbly a trilogy or a longer series, hence why they want to tap Yates who has experience directing a series of films that were adapted from books.

Even so. It hasn't been THAT long nce the miniseries, which in itself was both very good and quite faithful to the novel. Stephen King has a wide enough canon that they could pull a lot more for films rather than repeating the same ones.

I hope it will posbly a longer movie series.

I don't think even a trilogy (or more) for The Stand would work. There are so

many characters, so many concepts going on this book...and typically making a series of movies takes years, that important details may be overlooked. I wasn't terribly impressed with Yate's work on the Harry Potter movies. I don't believe he even read the books prior to filming. I think the best treatment for a 1200+ page book is a Showtime/Starz/HBO mini-series over the course of several seasons. I mean the whole entire purpose of the book wasn't the horror, it wasn't the action, wasn't even really the characters themselves...those are all incidental. The purpose was, if the world became like this and all of the tools were just left around waiting to be picked up and used again...would we rebuild the world the same way? At least that's what I gathered from it.

If that point is missed, then several movies worth of content are completely pointless. From Yate's work on Harry Potter, it seems entire plot lines don't matter. He likes to concentrate on the bullshit and extend it rather than shine a light on what's important.

I think the best treatment for a 1200+ page book is a Showtime/Starz/HBO mini-series over the course of several seasons. I mean the whole entire purpose of the book wasn't the horror, it wasn't the action, wasn't even really the characters themselves...those are all incidental. The purpose was, if the world became like this and all of the tools were just left around waiting to be picked up and used again...would we rebuild the world the same way? At least that's what I gathered from it.

A new miniseries would be an unnecessary retread. The '94 series was pretty damn good in adapting the material in the novel, I don't see any point in doing it over.