The Stand, about a superflu that wipes out most of the world’s population, is coming to TV later this year. The timing is weird, for obvious reasons.
Later this year, CBS All Access will bring us a miniseries based on The Stand, Stephen King’s sweeping epic about a virus known as Captain Trips that wipes out most of humanity in the space of a month, save precious few who are immune. Society collapses, and those remaining gather into two groups: one led by the benevolent Mother Abigail (Whoopi Goldberg) and the other by the wicked, literally demonic Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård).
The meat of The Stand is concerned with that good-vs-evil conflict, but the bit about the plague hits hard right now, when the world is dealing with a literal pandemic that has killed upwards of a million people. It’s a bit of a strange time to be telling this story, some that The New Mutants director Josh Boone — who executive produced and directed the pilot and finale of the new show — admitted to SyFy Wire.
“It is weird,” Boone laughed. “I got to bring a lot of amazing cast to the table and everything, but nobody thought a real pandemic was gonna happen. Obviously, what we’re living through is nowhere what The Stand was, but the similarities are eerie in the same way that the kids in New Mutants being quarantined and not able to get out.”
The cast is indeed great. In addition to Skarsgård and Goldberg, it also features James Marsden (Stu Redman), Amber Heard (Nadine Cross), Greg Kinnear (Glen Bateman), Henry Zaga (Nick Andros), and a lot more. The book has stood the test of time, too. “I think it’s one of the great American novels,” Boone said. “I think it’s sort of The Lord of the Rings, but in America. I’ve loved it my whole life I carried it for many years to get it made — from Warner Bros. to CBS.”
Ah, but the question is whether people will feel comfortable watching a show like this in a time like this. Obviously we won’t know until it debuts, but there are actually indications that content about plagues and diseases has gone up since this whole mess began. For example, demand for the movie Contagion shot up right as things were really taking off.
I guess I’ll take a silver lining where I can find it.
The Stand debuts on December 17 on CBS All Access. Hopefully by then the idea of a massive plague story won’t sound quite so unsettling, if it even does.
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