Making an adaptation of Stephen King‘s work is harder than it looks. Not only is King one of the most prolific authors of all time, but his novels tend to be fairly dense in terms of sry. And none of King’s novels is as dense as The Stand, which is considered to be his magnum opus. Doug Liman recently announced that he’ll be the latest filmmaker to adapt The Stand, but King fans balked at his plans to condense the novel’s events into a single film. This approach to The Stand can probably be called “bold” at best and “insane” at worst, but it displays the underlying issues that have plagued previous attempts to bring The Stand to life.
‘The Stand’ Features Dozens of Characters and Plotlines, Making It Virtually Impossible To Fully Adapt
The Stand’s story seems rather straightforward at first: a lethal strain of influenza referred to as “Captain Tripps” kills the majority of humanity, throwing the world into chaos. That’d be frightening enough, but a group of survivors — including Stuart Redman, who’s immune to Captain Tripps, and pregnant — start receiving visions of a dark figure. These survivors end up forming their own community under the benevolent “Mother Abagail”, while a dictatorship is forged in the ruins of Las Vegas underneath Randall Flagg, the “dark man” that has plagued Stuart’s dreams. But that’s only scratching the surface, as The Stand was originally an 823-page novel before King added an extra 400 pages for the “uncut” edition. While King said that he wanted to deliver a modern version of The Lordof the Rings, the point still stands that anyone who wants to adapt The Stand will have to deal with hundreds of characters, not to mention that large parts of the book haven’t aged well (especially a scene between the pyromaniac known as “The Trashcan Man” and a psychopath known as “The Kid”.)
Perhaps the biggest obstacle The Stand poses is the character of Randall Flagg. Flagg became a major menace in King’s other works, particularly theDark Tower novels, where he takes the form of Walter o’Dim, the “Man in Black” that Roland Deschain chases across the desert. Over time, King would start layering in more connections between his previous work and The Dark Tower, including characters that appeared in previous novels like Salem’s Lot or revealing that Pennywise the Clown was one of many eldritch horrors lurking in the dark. But the issue surrounding The Dark Tower (and might explain why the story, much like The Stand, is so tough to adapt) is because the rights to King’s novels are owned by different studios. Even though Paramount Pictures is adapting The Stand, Prime Video has The Dark Tower as part of a deal they signed with Mike Flanagan, who will be adapting the novels as a series. Simply put, there’s no way The Stand could fully live up to its full potential.
Previous Attempts To Bring ‘The Stand’ to the Big Screen Have Failed
Stephen King has wanted to get The Stand on movie screens since the ’80s, even tapping horror icon George A. Romero to direct from a screenplay he wrote. But the sheer length of King’s screenplay eventually led him to try adapting it into a television format, with Romero dropping out and Mick Garris — who helmed other King adaptations, including Sleepwalkers and the TV version of The Shining — directing for ABC. Doug Liman also isn’t the first director to try and bring The Stand to the silver screen, as Warner Bros and CBS Films (who previously owned the film rights) had sought a number of directors to adapt it. But a host of directors, including Harry Potter stalwart David Yatesand Ben Affleck, departed the project for multiple reasons. Eventually, Josh Boone would board the project following the massive success of The Fault in Our Stars, attempting to split the story into four different films and then a miniseries leading up to the film.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo 🍸James Bond 🏺Indiana Jones 🔧John McClane 🎭Ethan Hunt
01 You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02 You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03 You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04 The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05 How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06 Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07 Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08 What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09 Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10 It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Boone did eventually bring The Stand to screens, but in a different form than he expected. This time, it was a television miniseries for CBS All Access (the streamer that would eventually become Paramount+). But despite a talented cast that included Alexander Skarsgård giving the right amount of menace as Randall Flagg, and a finale penned by King himself, Boone’s version of The Stand was met with a mixed reception. Ironically, it’s one of the stars of this series who had the best response to Liman’s take on The Stand. Fiona Dourif simply wrote “Again?!” on Twitter, which sums up the major issue. It’s only been five years since Josh Boone’s take on The Stand ended. Rushing into a new version and attempting to do it in a single movie only proves that Liman and Hollywood haven’t learned anything from the past versions.
