Whoopi Goldberg and Alexander Skarsgard to battle for the soul of humanity in The Stand

Between Castle Rock, IT, and this, it is a good time to be Stephen King. The venerable horror author has a ton of projects on or coming to the screen at the moment, as Hollywood rediscovers what it loved about him.

CBS is getting in on the fun with a 10-part adaptation of The Stand, King’s post-apocalyptic fantasy about a plague that wipes nearly everyone in the United States, and his longest book to date. We already know who’s playing a lot of the key characters. James Marsden is grizzled Texan Stu Redman, the role played by Gary “Lieutenant Dan” Sinise when ABC adapted the book back in the ’90s. Amber Heard is Nadine Cross, a private school teacher battling dark temptations. Odessa Young will play Frannie Goldsmith, a cheery, pregnant 22-year-old student, and Henry Zaga is Nick Andros, a deaf-mute who marshals together members survivors and brings them to brings them to meet Mother Abagail, a saintly figure who gathers together the “good” survivors of the plague and helps them set up a new community in Boulder, Colorado. Naturally, the “bad” survivors gather in Las Vegas, led by the demonic Randall Flagg.

That’s a nice full cast already, but this book is packed with characters, so we have a lot to go. CBS announced several new additions today, including:

• Jovan Adepo is Larry Underwood, a young musician with some immaturity issues.
• Owen Teague is Harold Lauder, an intelligent, proactive survivor who becomes unhealthily fixated on Frannie Goldsmith.
• Brad William Henke, a developmentally disable man who accompanies Nick Andros on his journey.
• Daniel Sunjata is Cobb, a military man in charge of supervising Stu Redman while the government is still trying to find a clue to the plague. It doesn’t go well.

And then the big one: as predicted, Whoopi Goldberg will be playing the elderly, ethereal Mother Abigail, a symbol of pureness and good in King’s dark world.

But that’s not all! Shortly after CBS released all this info, Collider came along and announced that Alexander Skarsgard — who recently won an Emmy for his role on Big Little Lies — will be playing Randall Flagg, the big bad of the story.

A presence throughout several of King’s books, Flagg is an immutable force of evil who may or may not be immortal, or reincarnated, or more of a concept than a man, or something. He’s bad, is my point. He’s also one of the more important roles in the story to get right, so I hope Skarsgard nails him. Skarsgard is a pretty flexible actor with a lot of roles under his belt, so we should be good to go.

And of course I’m not worried at all about Goldberg playing Mother Abigail. If anything, it’s a bit of a waste of her talents; the role basically just requires her to be pure of heart and intone kind platitudes. Hopefully she’ll bring a bit of Whoopi-style sass to the part.

Stephen King is involved in this project directly, writing an epilogue not found in the original book. Expect to see it on TV in 2020-ish.

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