CBS has announced when it’ll debut its upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand: December 17th. The 9-episode series will debut on the network’s streaming platform, CBS All Access, and will feature a new coda for the series written by King himself.
The series is certainly a timely one. Published in 1978, King imagined a weaponized version of the influenza virus that sweeps over the world and kills 99.4% of all of human life, leaving behind a small number of people to try and rebuild society. King positions the story as a fight against good and evil, with Mother Abigail (played by Whoopi Goldberg) on one side, and Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård) on the other.
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The Stand
The novel was adapted as a TV series before in 1994, and Warner Bros. had plotted out a film adaptation in 2011 from David Yates and with Ben Affleck set to star. That project never went anywhere, but the studio brought in Josh Boone in 2014 for another attempt. Somewhere along the way, one film became four, and that eventually became a limited TV series with a film capping it off. That project also never came to fruition, and in 2016, the rights reverted back to CBS.
The miniseries idea stuck around, and CBS greenlit the project in 2019, with Boone set to direct the entire thing. The series will jump back and forth in time, with flashbacks introducing the major characters, and the series will primarily follow Fran (played by Odessa Young), a pregnant woman who appears to be immune to the illness.
The Stand will debut after CBS launches the third season of Star Trek: Discovery in October, which should give viewers a reason to hang onto that subscription for just a while longer.
Yes! My favorite SK book. I can’t wait to watch this and I think a re-watch of the old series is in order soon.
Nice! This is the first non-Star Trek related programming on CBS All Access that I would actually keep my subscription for. I’m a sucker for end of the world/post-apocalypse type stories.
Actually, Discovery‘s run of episodes finishes in January of next year, so if The Stand is really coming after the former show finishes then the latter would debut in January, not December.
The cast looks excellent. However, I hope the ending gets improved/changed. Because the means of the last minute rescue in 1994’s adaptation led to howls of derision.
I’m starting to think I can’t afford F&SF screen adaptations any more.
F&SF used to be called a ghetto but it’s been gentrified and you’ll need to pay rent of $50 or more per month if you want to see all the good stuff while people are still talking about it.
The Stand? Star Trek? CBS All Access
The Mandalorian? Disney+
Stranger Things? Netflix
Lord of the Rings/Middle Earth? Amazon Prime
See? Apple TV+
Brave New World? Peacock
Green Lantern? Dune? HBO Max
and on and on
Maybe you can do an article once in a while of the best F&SF available on regular old TV? I mean other than the CW comic book shows.
Some of us are on a budget.
@4/The6thJM: You can often get a free month long subscription for CBS All Access, so if you time it right, you can wait until Star Trek: Discovery season three has ended and The Stand has ended or close to ending and then you’ll have a whole month on which to binge all of the episodes. Just keep an eye out for those promos in your email or on the cbs all access website.
@5 I gather that entire point of @4’s comment was that they want to watch it as soon as it’s released in order to participate in the immediate online discussions in the wake of the screening and that this has become exorbitantly costly due to the splintering of streaming across so many services.
For what it’s worth, I think that HBO, Disney and Netflix have the cachet to work as stand alone services. Maybe Apple and Amazon can earn their way to that level. For everyone else though, it would be better for the business as well as the customer if they come under one these services or make an umbrella service of their own.
I suspect we will get there eventually but the journey is going to be much messier than it needs to be.