Josh Boone

While The Stand is on hold due to a rights issue, filmmaker Josh Boone is keeping busy with plenty of other projects, including another Stephen King adaptation (Revival), a new film based on Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, and — last but not least — New Mutants. There's been plenty of speculation regarding the official roster in the X-Men spinoff, but if Boone's latest series of Instagram posts is to be believed, his mutant team may have just been revealed.

Just last month, a big rumor suggested that Josh Boone’s New Mutants movie was eyeing Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams and The Witch breakout Anya Taylor-Joy to star in the X-Men spinoff, with Alexandra Shipp in talks to reprise her role as young Storm from Apocalypse. Fox has predictably denied these rumors, Williams herself sorta-kinda confirms it in a new interview, though it sounds like nothing is close to official as of yet.

Following the record-breaking success of Deadpool, Fox is officially moving ahead with their New Mutants spinoff with Josh Boone set to direct based on a script he’s co-writing with Knate Gwaltney. The first cast and character details have reportedly arrived, with at least one X-Men: Apocalypse newcomer joining the fray alongside Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams and The Witch breakout Anya Taylor-Joy.

And in other Stephen King news…The Dark Tower isn’t the only ambitious and sprawling adaptation that’s been in development for ages. A film based on King’s post-apocalyptic epic The Stand has also been in the works for some time, with The Fault in Our Stars director (and King super-fan) Josh Boone on board to write and direct, and while Warner Bros. and Boone were close to figuring out the best approach for the project, the rights lapsed and Boone moved on to another King adaptation: Revival. The Stand may not be dead (yet), but it is definitely on hold, according to producer Roy Lee.

Just last week we learned that the long-developing adaptation of The Stand has been delayed (again), but director Josh Boone just couldn’t wait any longer to adapt a Stephen King story, so he’s set his sights on Revival. And it looks as though he’s wasting absolutely zero time in getting the sci-fi horror flick into production, as Samuel L. Jackson is reportedly in talks for one of the leading roles.

Josh Boone is kind of a major Stephen King fan, and it’s that fandom and devotion to the author’s works that helped Boone land the directing gig on the long-developing adaptation of The Stand. Although Boone already sold the author on his ambitious pitch for that novel (which may or may not involve a miniseries in addition to one or two films), the director has pushed that project back to tackle another King adaptation first: Revival.

Josh Boone’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand grows ever more ambitious — what started as a simple feature-length film (no way that could work), evolved into plans for multiple films, and now an additional eight-part miniseries on Showtime. Yes, Warner Bros. is reportedly partnering with the premium network for the series, which will serve as a prequel of sorts to lead up to the feature film.

With the current X-Men movie universe reportedly winding down after the now-filming X-Men: Apocalypse, Fox needed to find a way to keep their Marvel superhero franchise alive. Instead of another reboot, they’ve instead focused on something different: a spinoff...

The long-gestating big screen version of Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’ is nothing if not ambitious. The original novel is a beast, a 1,200 page post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy epic that spans the entire country and features a cast of dozens of important characters. It’s one of the best and densest genre novels ever written, so perhaps a four-film adaptation with a cast of movie stars is the best and only way to go. Anyway, director Josh Boone‘s not-so-private goal of casting the film entirely with big, recognizable names has already achieved phase one: he’s nabbed Matthew McConaughey.

Stephen King's 'The Stand' is a project that has struggled to find its way to the big screen for many years now, but in the hands of 'The Fault in Our Stars' director Josh Boone, it's finally picking up serious steam and the adaptation has felt more promising than ever. Whether or not Boone could take King's epic novel and translate it into one film has been a lingering question, and one that Boone has finally answered: No, 'The Stand' will not be just one film. Instead, it will be a shocking four-film adaptation, which seems excessive even for fans of the novel.