The bard of Bangor just can’t stop tinkering with The Stand.
CBS All Access announced at the Television Critics’ Association Summer Press Tour that its upcoming, nine-episode adaptation of Stephen King’s landmark 1978 horror epic will feature an all-new conclusion written by the author himself, as reported by Entertainment Weekly.
King has written the miniseries’ final episode; the others will be written by director/executive producer Josh Boone (who also directed the hugely popular 2014 film adaptation of John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars) and executive producer Benjamin Cavell, creator of the CBS show SEAL Team. The original novel tells the story of the survivors of an apocalyptic global pandemic that wipes out 99 percent of the human race.
On Twitter, King said that “The script for that final episode is written. I was glad Josh Boone gave me the chance, because that final story has been in my mind for 30 years.”
King was the sole writer of a previous, four-episode miniseries of The Stand, which ran on ABC in 1994. He passed up the chance to add significant extra material then, but it’s not the first time that King has taken a second bite at this apple; in 1990, he published an expanded edition of his novel that added hundreds of additional pages—including, tellingly, a creepy new epilogue.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
