Christmas is coming a week early this year for fans of Stephen King, as CBS All Access announced that its star-studded limited series The Stand will debut Dec. 17 exclusively on the streaming service.
I've been looking forward to that day for six long years, having first reported the news that Josh Boone would be writing and directing this adaptation -- back when it was going to be a movie -- for Warner Bros. and CBS Films. Obviously, a lot has changed since then, but what hasn't changed is my enthusiasm for this project. I've never read King's epic tale of good and evil but the 1994 miniseries made quite an impression on me as a 10-year-old kid who was just starting to wrap his head around those concepts.
This version of The Stand finds the fate of mankind resting on the frail shoulders of 108-year-old Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg) and a handful of fellow survivors of a deadly plague that decimated the world. Their worst nightmares are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers -- Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård), who's also known as the Dark Man.
The ensemble cast also includes James Marsden as Stu Redman, Odessa Young as Frannie Goldsmith, Jovan Adepo as Larry Underwood, Amber Heard as Nadine Cross, Owen Teague as Harold Lauder, Henry Zaga as Nick Andros, Brad William Henke as Tom Cullen, Irene Bedard as Ray Bretner, Nat Wolff as Lloyd Henreid, Eion Bailey as Weizak, Heather Graham as Rita Blakemoor, Katherine McNamara as Julie Lawry, Fiona Dourif as Ratwoman, Natalie Martinez as Dayna Jurgens, Hamish Linklater as Dr. Jim Ellis, Daniel Sunjata as Cobb and Oscar winner Greg Kinnear as Glen Bateman.
New episodes of The Stand will be released on Thursdays each week, which means the final episode will air sometime in February 2021. What's extra cool about that final episode is that The Stand will close with a new coda written by King himself.
“During the two years we spent making The Stand, we all felt the responsibility of adapting what may be the most beloved work of one of the world’s most beloved storytellers, but none of us could have imagined that Stephen King’s 40-year-old masterpiece about a global pandemic would come to be so eerily relevant,” said showrunner/EP Benjamin Cavell. “We’re honored to tell this sprawling, epic story, including a new coda that Stephen King has wanted to add for decades. We’re so proud of this show and its attempt to find meaning and hope in the most uncertain of times. We can’t wait to share it with the world.”
The Stand was produced by CBS Television Studios as well as Jake Braver, Jill Killington, Owen King, Knate Lee and Stephen Welke serve as producers. Cavell executive produced alongside Taylor Elmore, Will Weiske, Jimmy Miller, Roy Lee and Richard P. Rubinstein. The New Mutants helmer Boone directed the series and will be credited as an executive producer on the first and last episodes.
This is the first piece of programming on CBS All Access that I'm genuinely looking forward to, but we'll have to wait and see if it brings in new subscribers for the streamer, which has seen success catering to genre fans with its various Star Trek shows and the Twilight Zone reboot. For Collider's ranked list of TV shows based on the works of Stephen King, click here.