By Matthew Jackson, Source: Blastr.com
Ever since we heard about Warner Bros. big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand back in February, we’ve been waiting for some hard news on just who’d be working on this thing.
For a while it looked like the project would go to Steve Kloves and David Yates, the writing and directing team who successfully closed out the Harry Potter franchise. But now, in what seems like a pretty unconventional move, Warner Bros. has chosen Ben Affleck to take on King’s apocalyptic story.
If we assume this is the next thing he’ll do, the project would be Affleck’s fourth feature film, and his first in the sci-fi/fantasy/horror vein. His current directing project, Argo, is the story of how a defunct Roger Zelazny sci- fi picture helped save American hostages in Iran, but The Stand—the story of a government-engineered super-plague that devastates America and the survivors that face a supernatural evil—would be his first genre work as a director. It would also be the first time he’s done a project on this scale. Argo’s a big story, but The Stand is a true epic.
King himself hasn’t weighed in on this choice just yet, but then again he was never too pleased with the idea of a feature film version of his massive book in the first place, especially if it turns out to be just one film. We haven’t heard directly from Affleck on this choice just yet either, but if he is locked into this flick, he’s definitely stepping into the biggest project of his career.
So did Warner Bros. make the right choice? Is an enthusiastic, younger director like Affleck the way to go? He’s already got two gritty and acclaimed flicks—Gone Baby Gone and The Town—under his belt. What do you think?
