Sorry, Stephen King fans, but it looks like an adaptation of one of his seminal works, THE STAND, is facing troubles yet again. It’s a property that’s faced countless changes, setbacks, and obstacles since writer/director Josh Boone took the lead on it. Back in 2014, it was thought that it would be a four-film series.

From there, there was the idea to make it into an eight-episode mini-series, plus a film, and it’s since gone back and forth between the two mediums. If you’re losing track on which version of the idea the studio is on at that point, you’re not alone.

The latest in this ongoing saga comes from Collider. The outlet recently interviewed producer Roy Lee, and the man had a lot to say regarding the status of the project.

“Right now it’s just in a holding pattern trying to figure out how to best make the movie because we’ve toyed with breaking it up into multiple movies, making it into one, making it into two. The latest draft, Josh Boone had written it and he was very anxious to make it but since then has written another script, REVIVAL, which he’s gonna do beforehand, so we’re just waiting for that.

[…]

If you do the one movie, you obviously have to take out a big portion of the book, so trying to balance what to keep and what to cut out was a long process because there’s so much to go through. So that’s why it’s been a long process. Right now it’s written as two movies.”

Without a doubt, Boone has Stephen King fever, and seems to be going after every property of his he can grab (he’s also been attached to LISEY’S STORY), and given Hollywood’s propensity to duck out at the first sign of trouble, I can see why.

But what about the TV miniseries leading up to the film? Well, don’t expect to see that any time soon.

“There was definitely talk about doing that but the logistics made it very difficult to try to do a worldwide launch of a movie when the TV component would not necessarily be released at the same time worldwide. So it became a logistic nightmare to try to figure that out, so that plan was abandoned.”

Okay, so no TV-to-film…but what about a straight TV series? Unfortunately, King doesn’t really seem to be on board with that idea.

“That’s why there was this discussion about going to HBO or Netflix to try to do a series that launched before a movie, but we’ve been opened to everything just to make it work. I think TV would be great but Stephen King believes that his version—the miniseries that was done before is a very good interpretation of the novel.”

So what’s outcome here? Don’t expect to see it in the next five years or so. Of the upcoming Stephen King adaptations, REVIVAL definitely seems like lower hanging fruit for director Josh Boone to tackle first. From there, we’ll have to wait and see how brave the studio is feeling.

In the meantime, I recommend you take a listen to this episode of HOLLYWOOD BABBLE-ON where Kevin Smith interviews Boone. In the interview Boone talks about his overall vision for the project, as well his love of Stephen King. The information itself is pretty old (late 2014), but you can definitely hear the passion in Boone’s voice.

Let’s hope the young filmmaker will one day be able to see his true vision come to fruition.