Josh Boone has been hard at work as of late. Since directing THE FAULT IN OUR STARS, the writer-director has been highly in-demand when it comes to bringing other literary works to the big screen. FAULT was based on the book by John Green, and now Hollywood has tapped him to work on features for writers ranging from Anne Rice, to the folks behind Marvel’s X-Men: The New Mutants, to the legendary Stephen King.
In terms of King, Boone has not one but two projects in the ether. For a while, all eyes were on his adaptation of King’s seminary book THE STAND. The director had gone as far as to secure a cast with verbal agreements, and yet now the project has stalled. It’s still on the way, but on indefinite hold while they figure out the exact logistics of telling such a sprawling story. The other project, which has now taken THE STAND‘s place is REVIVAL.
Based on King’s 2014 best-seller, REVIVAL tells the story of a charismatic preacher who loses his faith in God when his wife and child are tragically killed in an accident.
“Unhinged from the religion that grounded and gave him a conscience, the preacher becomes ruthless in his experimentation into the healing but dangerous power of electrical current, positioning him to act as God-like faith healer and opening a terrifying Pandora’s Box. Intertwined with the preacher is a young man with demons of his own, who has benefited from the preacher’s talents and becomes a reluctant accomplice to his deadly obsession.”
[Summary Courtesy of Deadline]
Boone has written a script for the project, has pitched it to Universal, and has cleared his schedule so that he can hopefully direct it this year. It’s clear that the writer-director has an affinity for all things Stephen King.
Here’s what he’s said about King:
“I’ve read every book Stephen King has written, multiple times; he taught me how to write characters. When I read The Stand, it was literally from under my bed. I was raised by evangelical Christians, who believed in The Rapture. I wasn’t allowed to read Stephen King books for a large part of my childhood. I ripped the cover off this Frank E. Peretti book This Present Darkness, a Christian bestseller, and put it on The Stand, because they were roughly the same size. I would read these books under the bed and hide them in the box spring, like normal kids stashedtheir pornography. My mom found my King stash and they burned the books in the fireplace. I still have a picture in a photo album of this giant pile of ashes in my parents’ fireplace.”
The two of them switched gears from THE STAND to REVIVAL while working on the script for the former. When King saw that STAND was still a ways off from being ready, he switched gears with Boone and they set their sights on making REVIVAL next.
Have you read either book? Which one are you most excited to see get the big screen treatment?
SOURCE: Deadline