The Stand is heading for the big screen

From THR – Stephen King’s classic novel, The Stand, is finally heading for the big screen. The long-time rights holder, CBS, has at last decided to take on a partner and move forward with the project – and Warner Bros beat out Fox and Sony in a bidding war to earn the right to be that partner. Mosaic and Roy Lee are producing, and Stephen King will be involved in some capacity.

No word yet on a writer or director, and it’s still being decided whether the adaptation will be one or several movies.

The Stand is a story of good vs. evil after a virus wipes out most of the American population. While it features dozens of characters (such as the Trashcan Man and Mother Abigail) and overlapping story lines running over many years, the struggle boils down to a group of survivors fighting the Antichrist-like Randall Flagg.

Book Jacket:

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death.

And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides — or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail — and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.