Not even Stephen King could come up with something so twisted. When The Stand first published in 1978, who would predict that its (second) television adaptation would be released into our entertainment ecosystem during the middle of a global pandemic? King’s mammoth novel (his longest singular work) kicks off with a powerful influenza strain killing most of the world’s population, sending the few survivors into an end-of-days battle of good versus evil.
Sounds like a blast for the whole family in 2020, no?
Well, many suggest that the best way to deal with anxiety is by facing it head-on, and a subscription to CBS All Access is less expensive than therapy, so it might be worth a try.
The trailer for the new series, which stars James Marsden, Amber Heard, Whoopi Goldberg, Odessa Young, Greg Kinnear, Jovan Adepo, Owen Teague, and Alexander Skarsgård as the villain Randall Flagg, dropped on Friday as part of the virtual New York Comic Con. Josh Boone of New Mutants directed the series pilot, which debuts on December 17. It follows in the trend of “sad covers,” with a downer version of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” (oftentimes mistakenly called “Don’t Worry About A Thing.”)
If you have sharp eyes you may have noticed the carpet pattern from Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining popping up at the 1:27 mark. This is a surprising wink, in that King notoriously dislikes (to put it mildly) Kubrick’s 1980 version of his famous writer-going-cuckoo novel. However, it appears that the iconic rug is in the baddie’s lair, so maybe this is intended as some kind of diss?
King is an executive producer on the project, and has written what has been called a “new coda” to the story for this series. King’s son, Owen, is a producer and has writing credits on some episodes.
It remains to be seen if “Don’t Fear The Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult will make its way to the show. Lyrics from the song appear as an epigraph in the book, and the tune was used quite effectively in the eerie opening to the 1994 miniseries.
At the NYCC panel, moderated by V.F.’s Anthony Breznican, members of the cast teased what to expect this December. Whoopi Goldberg commented that her character, Mother Abigail, needed a bit of an update. A “magical negro” character was “fine 40 years ago, but she had to be a real person. . . I needed her not to be the little old black lady that has all the magical information. She doesn’t.”
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