Although The Dark Tower was ultimately turned down by Universal, it seems as if the key screenwriter and director behind the Harry Potter movies are planning to make The Stand their next big film – with a little help from Warner Bros.
According to Hitfix, screenwriter Steven Kloves and director David Yates are “in the process of finalizing” their deals to make The Stand, and the possibilities are pretty cool with this one.
Of course, Warner Brothers is likely drooling over the possibility of another big franchise now that Harry Potter is kaput, and with the key Harry Potter creative team aboard to do it should bring about some interesting results.
Originally George Romero was going to make The Stand with Stephen King writing the screenplay, and the project was at Warner Brothers then as well, but the story’s length was a big problem, and there was simply no way the studio would back a horror film that long that was going to be in the $25 million dollar range. (This was a lot of money for a movie way back when).
Romero and King did a smaller movie as a try-out for Warners – Creepshow – which was a nice sized hit for the studio. Still, the early eighties incarnation of The Stand never did get off the ground.
It’s also a shame to think what the special effects wizards of the day, like Romero’s main make-up man Tom Savini or The Thing’s Rob Bottin could have come up with before CGI was so entrenched – say when horror films like American Werewolf and The Thing were breaking a lot of new ground.
Then again, with Yates and Kloves aboard, there’s no reason to fear them making a movie with too much CGI and not enough scares.
As a long time horror fan, the fact that a major studio’s willing to at least try making an epic horror tale with the scope of Lord of the Rings is very exciting, and hopefully proof that the majors are taking the genre much more seriously these days.
