Troubling News about "The Stand" Adaptation?

[jmodlinc]

From Bloody-Disgusting (Collider)...

"In other news, Harry Potter director David Yates spoke with Collider as to why he passed on a fresh adaptation of King's The Stand, which Warner Bros. eventually landed on Ben Afflek to get behind the camera. Get the skinny inside.

"I was offered 'The Stand.' I love 'The Stand,' I read it when I was a kid, it was one of my favorite books when I was growing up, I love Stephen King, I think he's a remarkable writer," Yates told the site. "And coming out of 'Potter,' you wanna work with an author who has the same reach as a Jo Rowling, and frankly Stephen King does. My issues though were about the adaptation. I wanted to work with Steve Kloves, Steve Kloves wanted to work with me, we were both committed to doing it, but in that time it took to let go of 'Potter' and to think about how we would tackle the adaptation, we both decided that it wasn't for us, so we left it. We sort of withdrew basically."

What's interesting is how Yates explains that the story doesn't lend itself to the kind of "tentpole" feature Warners wanted.

"What I love about King's work and what I love about 'The Stand' is the fact that Stephen King really puts you into these people's lives, and you see the world from a very intimate human level, which normally is something I love. But we felt this pressure to make these super tentpole movies with this material, and the things that you get in 'Potter' — which are these extraordinary episodes of action — they didn't exist in the material, and I was worried I wouldn't be able to deliver the kind of movie that ultimately the studio was hoping to get from this material. I could see making a miniseries from it, a really interesting, intricate, layered, enjoyable long-burn of a miniseries, I could see that, but what was missing for me were the big movie moments in the material, the big set pieces."

It's disappointing that they passed on the project, but respectable that they wanted to do right by the source material. Does this mean Affleck is getting himself into an ultimate failure?"


www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/27227

[xtrialbyfirex]

the stand doesn't have big set pieces? there is an atomic explosion at the end of the book, i'd say that is pretty big lol

[bigmac]

You're talking about the climax. Most of the novel is rather slow, punctuated by a few action pieces. But while the novel might move at a slow pace, it's the involvement of the characters that grips the reader, not a series of escalating action sequences. And that's not something a studio would want as a tent pole.

A tent pole picture is something like Transformers, something the studio invests a lot of money into because they expect a quick return on their dollars. To quote Wikipedia:

In the movie business, tent poles are sometimes widely released initial offerings in a string of releases and are expected by studios to turn a profit in a short period of time. Such programming is often accompanied by larger budgets and heavy promotion.[citation needed]

The Potter franchise was a tent pole, something Warner did that would generate them lots of money and even things out in the event that other pictures failed. It contained lots of action and was heavily promoted. The Stand doesn't really fit the mold, unless the screenwriters add in a lot of crap that would turn the novel into little more than Mad Max in the United States.