See the first images from Stephen King’s The Stand on CBS All Access!

The Stand is Stephen King’s longest book, and the man is no stranger to long books. It tells the epic story of a man-made virus that wipes out 99% of the world’s population, and the survivors who try to rebuild in the aftermath.

Obviously, this is a very touchy subject given where we are in the world right now, and even King himself isn’t sure if people will be up for watching the new nine-episode miniseries adaptation coming to CBS All Access. “Whether or not anybody will want to watch it in the aftermath of coronavirus, I don’t know,” he told Vanity Fair. “The book is selling—The Stand, the novel, is selling—so ….”

Indeed, we’ve had reports of plague-related content becoming more popular in this time, with movies like 2011’s Contagion getting viewed a lot more. Is it weird that people are drawn to story’s about the destruction of humanity at a time when the world is going through an unprecedented crisis? I don’t know, I’m not a sociologist, but it might mean there’s an appetite for The Stand.

Showrunners Benjamin Cavell and Taylor Elmore are eager to highlight the humanist themes of the series, rather than the spookily relevant ones. “It’s about the fundamental questions of what society owes the individual and what we owe to each other,” said Cavell. “Over the last however-many years, we have sort of taken for granted the structure of democracy. Now, so much of that is being ripped down to the studs. It’s interesting to see a story about people who are rebuilding it from the ground up.”

Still, there’s no avoiding that The Stand could hit a little too close to home. “It was very surreal, obviously, to start to realize that there was a creeping pandemic the way there was at the beginning of our show,” Cavell said. But ready or not, here it comes.

BY ROBERT FALCONER/CBS

The Stand is an ensemble drama in a big way. A small portion of the population is. immune to the virus, and we follow dozens of them as they form into two groups, one in Boulder, Colorado and one in Las Vegas. Among the most important characters are expectant mother Frannie Goldsmith (Odessa Young) and her kinda-creepy friend Harold Lauder (Owen Teague, who played one of the bullies in IT, another King adaptation).

BY ROBERT FALCONER/CBS

“We do focus very much on that story of Fran and the baby,” Elmore said. “What are a modern woman’s motivations in this position, a 20-year-old kid who is pregnant when the world ends? She’s a formidable force in this story.”

“She’s at the crossroads between that responsibility, but then also [wondering], is it cruel to bring children into a failing world?” Young said. “Is it futile if there’s no hope for humanity? Even after the virus has run its course, is it an act of cruelty to continue humanity?”

BY JAMES MINCHIN/CBS

Indeed, Frannie is in three of the new photos from the show, so you get the idea that she’s important indeed. But this cast is big. There’s Larry Underwood (Jovan Adepo), a musician who gets his first big hit just as the plague hits; Stu Redman (James Marsden), a Texan who eventually gets involved with Frannie; Nadine Cross (Amber Heard), a teacher who battles a dark destiny; Nick Andros (Henry Zaga), a deaf-mute with a keen understanding of human nature; Glen Bateman (Greg Kinnear), a widowed sociology professor; Rita Blakemoor, a New York socialite, and many more.

In the book, the characters are divided into the “good” and “bad” groups, which eventually come into conflict. The good characters gather in Boulder, led by the charismatic, 108-year-old Mother Abigail (Whoopi Goldberg):

“She is very, very righteous and very good. But really flawed I feel,” Goldberg said. “I’ve been fighting with not making her the Magic Negro, because she’s complicated.”

"She doesn’t listen when God is talking to her. And she tends to go her own way because she’s been like this her whole life. It takes her a little while to figure out that there’s something bigger than her."

Leading the other side is Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård), a demonic presence — literally, he’s not human — who rallies the evil characters in the wake of the catastrophe.

“He’s so charming and he’s so handsome, and so powerful—I mean genuinely powerful, able to perform these sort of miracles where he could levitate himself and he has these actual powers,” said Elmore. “And yet he needs this adulation and this kind of worship from these people whom he’s summoned to him. He needs to have them make a show all the time of how grateful they are to him. And there’s something fundamentally weak about that.”

"Flagg is so beautiful, he is absolutely a lion-like God figure. With perfect hair and … and also, there’s a softness to Alex’s performance that I think is fascinating. Alex just plays it where you feel not only sympathy for this character, but you hopefully understand why it’s so easy for people to gravitate towards him. He’s just magnetic, he’s just absolutely fascinating to watch. He’s galvanizing as a leader."

Flagg is the villain, and a key role to get right. It’s also a really fun role, and hopefully Skarsgård can run with it.

Stephen King has written a new epilogue for this version of The Stand. It also sounds like this new version will mix up the timeline. The original book begins with the start of the plague and moves on chronologically from there, but this version will start in the thick of things and feature flashbacks for the individual characters.

Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about that change. If the new show sucks we always have the 1994 miniseries with Gary Sinise and Molly Ringwald:

We don’t have an exact release date for The Stand, but the plan is to debut it on CBS All Access this year. We’ll see how it goes.

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