In a recent MTV interview, Stephen King expressed excitement at Josh Boone's work on The Stand adaptation. Of course, many of us have been less than excited about this feature ever since Boone announced it would be a single three hour movie. Good grief. But King isn't ready to give up on Boone, or the idea of multiple movies.
"I think that his take is terrific. And don't count on it being one film. Because there's talk about doing it in an entirely different and innovative way. And I don't want to go into it because it's Josh's baby."Check out Kelly West's article at cinemablend.com titled, "The Stand Movie Could Be Planning Something Really Different." There's some pretty good commentary worth checking out. West writes:
Now let's get to speculating and theorizing. On the surface, saying "don't count on it being one film" could mean simply that more than one film is planned. But that's neither "entirely different" nor particularly "innovative." What would be different is a TV series, miniseries or movie that sets up the story and/or some of the characters without interrupting the flow of the film. Meaning -- and this is pure speculation here -- maybe they're planning to do some kind of lead-in project which would help capture more of the story than what would be able to fit into a three-hour movie. If they divided the story the right way, the movie would ideally hold up on its own, without people needing to have seen the TV movie/miniseries. But those fans who want to see this book properly fleshed out on screen would get to enjoy both. That'd be my idea of "entirely different" and "innovative."
I'll reserve judgment until I have a better idea of what Boone's plan is, but this sounds at least somewhat encouraging. I sand (sorry) by my assertion that the story simply can't be done in three hours, so if it turns out that they have a plan to do more, then all of a sudden I'd be much more optimistic.
ReplyDeleteI agree.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of late -- King's been giving his enthusiastic nod to all kinds of projects that end up being less than satisfying. (cough cough --Under The Dome -- A Good Marriage. . .)
Indeed. Let's hope this ends up better than those; if it doesn't, it's gonna break my heart a little bit. Maybe even a lot bit.
ReplyDeletelet's just hope DOME ends someday. . .
ReplyDeleteI think the key paragraph in the cinemablend article is the following:
ReplyDelete" And to give credit where credit is due, this speculation stems largely from the plans that were once being tinkered with when Universal was trying to bring The Dark Tower series to the big (and small) screen. The Stand may only be one book, but it's a big book with a story that could lend itself really nicely to a big-small screen combo-pack if they figured out a way to organize the characters and the story the right way."
Whether or not this will be the case, and whether or not this may be a ploy to speed a Tower adapt into high gear remains to be seen (and right now, actually seeing will amount to believing at least in this case).
My only other thought is even if they do manage to go the movie tie-in route, I wonder how effectively such tactics can successfully translate a winning TV product to the screen, even with all the budget in the world.
For instance, Breaking Bad worked so well because of it's small screen format, as opposed to the big screen. Personally, I still push for a 3-4 season Cable series, like they did with The Wire.
ChrisC