Why David Yates Turned Down THE STAND

The Stand is Stephen King's masterpiece, and that is saying quite a bit when King has so many great novels to choose from. The Stand is one of the most celebrated and critically adored horror novels of all time.

The story begins with a man made flu that is so powerful that it wipes most of the humans and animals on Earth. Less than one percent of the human population survives. Much of the beginning with the superflu focuses on how the flu was made, released to the public, and the failure to contain it.

The second half of the story focuses on two groups being formed, a good group and an evil group. The good group are made up of people that have dreams of a old kind woman that gives them a message of hope, and tells them to come visit her in Boulder, CO. While the evil group is lured to Las Vegas by haunting dreams by a devilish character named Flagg.

The third part of the tale focuses on the two groups becoming aware of each other and both groups realize that the other is a threat to their way of life. Instead of an all out battle, just four members of the good group are sent to take on the leader, Flagg. On the way to Vegas one of the members has to drop out of the crusade, the other three carry on and then ... you'll have to watch to find out how it ends.

Excerpt from an interview with COLLIDER

“I was offered The Stand. I love The Stand, I read it when I was a kid, it was one of my favorite books when I was growing up, I love Stephen King, I think he’s a remarkable writer. And coming out of Potter, you wanna work with an author who has the same reach as a Jo Rowling, and frankly Stephen King does. My issues though were about the adaptation. I wanted to work with Steve Kloves, Steve Kloves wanted to work with me, we were both committed to doing it, but in that time it took to let go of Potter and to think about how we would tackle the adaptation, we both decided that it wasn’t for us, so we left it. We sort of withdrew basically.”

“What I love about King’s work and what I love about The Stand is the fact that Stephen King really puts you into these people’s lives, and you see the world from a very intimate human level, which normally is something I love. But we felt this pressure to make these super tentpole movies with this material, and the things that you get in Potter—which are these extraordinary episodes of action—they didn’t exist in the material, and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to deliver the kind of movie that ultimately the studio was hoping to get from this material. I could see making a miniseries from it, a really interesting, intricate, layered, enjoyable long-burn of a miniseries, I could see that, but what was missing for me were the big movie moments in the material, the big set pieces.”