Harry Potter team to adapt The Stand

By Rick Marshall August 12, 2011

Now that the decade-spanning Harry Potter movie franchise is in the rearview mirror, Warner Bros. appears to be turning its attention to other ambitious projects — namely, an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Stand. And given the success of Harry Potter, it’s probably no surprise that the studio is looking to some of the masterminds behind its boy-wizard saga to bring King’s post-apocalyptic saga to the big screen.

According to HitFix, Warner Bros. is currently in the final stages of negotiation with director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves for a multi-movie adaptation of The Stand. Yates was the director of the final four Harry Potter films, while Kloves was the writer on all but one of the eight films in the franchise (he didn’t write the fifth film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).

The site reports that The Stand is a “priority project” for the studio, which is hoping to replicate the success of its grand experiment with Harry Potter.

Of course, as anyone who’s read The Stand knows, King’s phenomenally popular epic is definitely not Young Adult fare. The story follows the survivors of a cataclysmic plague that wipes out much of the Earth’s population in gruesome fashion, and the subsequent, biblical battle that develops between good and evil entities vying for control of the world. The most recent “Expanded Edition” of the novel clocks in at over 1100 pages, adding even more heft to the previous 800-page editions.

If the studio’s deal goes through, it won’t be the first time King’s novel has made it to the screen. The story was previously adapted as a six-hour miniseries in 1994 directed by Mick Garris and aired on ABC.

The novel was also adapted in a recent, critically praised line of Marvel Comics miniseries (pictured above) that retold King’s story in chapter-based form.

At this point, everything is still unofficial regarding Yates and Kloves’ involvement in the movie, but we’ll be sure to keep you posted as more news develops.

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