Stephen King’s The Stand coming to CBS All Access
By Shawn Lealos
CBS All Access made a lot of news when it brought Star Trek to their OTT streaming service, and now they might be getting Stephen King’s greatest novel to adapt — The Stand.
This likely would come as no surprise to fans of Stephen King, who also sent his novel Mr. Mercedes to AT&T for their Audience network. While that angered many fans, the fact is that anyone could watch it on the DirecTV Now app without even subscribing to DirecTV Now.
In the case of The Stand, fans will have to subscribe to the CBS All Access service, much like Star Trek fans had to do last year. Adding Star Trek: Discovery helped the CBS All Access build up over two million subscribers. However, there is no telling if The Stand will add to those numbers.
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Tracking Board reported that CBS All Access will bring The Stand to its service as a 10-hour miniseries. This is huge news since the original ABC version was only six hours and left out a lot of moments from the novel (which is still one of King’s longest).
That original miniseries had a whos-who of big-time names for 1994. Gary Sinise (CSI: New York), Miguel Ferrer (NCIS: Los Angeles), Rob Lowe (The West Wing), Molly Ringwald (Riverdale), Jamey Sheridan (Homeland), Laura San Giacomo (NCIS), and the legendary Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee starred in the series.
The Stand takes place during an outbreak of Captain Trips — the flu that killed 99.4% of the Earth’s population in just two weeks. In the United States, two groups formed — a batch of survivors that had visions of an older woman named Mother Abigail in Nebraska and a group of bad guys gathered together in Las Vegas by Randall Flagg, the Man in Black.
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The two sides then go to battle with the fate of the world at stake.
Josh Boone (The New Mutants) has signed on to bring The Stand miniseries to life for CBS All Access. Boone wanted to make this as a movie trilogy but is still signed on to direct it as a TV miniseries.
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Now, the big question is what The Stand will end up rated because it needs the freedom of a network like HBO or Starz to delve into the darkness of the story. That handicapped the ABC series and CBS All Access can’t hold it back with censors of the entire project will end up meaningless.