Warner Bros. Wants Paul Greengrass to Direct ‘The Stand’

'The Stand' is one of Stephen King's best novels and it has the potential to be a truly incredible film. Warner Bros. seems very aware of this face since they keep on attaching their best and brightest filmmakers to the project ... but everyone keeps dropping out. David Yates was the first to go, followed by Ben Affleck and Scott Cooper, but the studio is supposedly eyeing a new and very interesting choice: Paul Greengrass.

The scoop comes from Badass Digest, who says that the 'Captain Phillips' director has moved to the top of the studio's wish list. That doesn't mean that an offer has gone out (it doesn't even mean that they've even spoken to him about the project), but it does give you an idea of what the studio wants from this film. They want something big and classy and they need a filmmaker with impressive chops to make it all work.

Greengrass has plenty of experience directing popular studio movies (his two Bourne movies were massive smash hits) and 'The Stand' seems like a great match. The epic source novel tells the story of a war between tribes of good and evil in an America that's been all-but-emptied by a deadly superflu nicknamed "Captain Trips."  It's big and crazy and weird, a post-apocalyptic 'Lord of the Rings' with a laid-back Texan instead of a Hobbit and a demonic drifter named The Walking Dude instead of Sauron. It's a genre masterpiece.

Greengrass has never made a movie remotely like this and that's why it sounds so fascinating. He's a director with an eye for realism, with his fictional and true stories grounding the audience in a world that feels all too real and extreme. If Greengrass is interested (and he may not be), his take on this material could be unlike anything we've ever seen.

We'll keep our ear to the ground and let you know what we hear next.