First Look At Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’ Adaptation With James Mardsen, Whoopi Goldberg, Alexander Skarsgard

Stephen King’s 1978 novel The Stand is about a global pandemic, so what better time to get your first look at the new limited series.

While the deadly plague at the centre of King’s novel and series is far worse than COVID-19, the showrunners tell Vanity Fair it is surreal to be putting the finishing touches on “The Stand” amid the current pandemic.

“It was very surreal, obviously, to start to realize that there was a creeping pandemic the way there was at the beginning of our show,” says co-showrunner Benjamin Cavell.

“First there’s chaos, and then there’s reintegration, so it’s a question of, do things reintegrate in a way that’s good, or do they reintegrate in a way that’s Hitlerian and bad? It could go either way, so I wanted to write about that. I wanted to put those two forces in conflict,” King says of his original story.

The upcoming CBS All Access series stars Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abigail, a woman who inspires survivors to unite with strength and empathy. At odds with her and her followers is the demon Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgard) whose ideologies are setting up for a clash that could fulfil the prophecy of Armageddon. The 10-episode series also co-stars James Marsden, Amber Heard, Nat Wolff, Greg Kinnear, and Odessa Young.

The Stand was previously adapted for a 1994 TV miniseries starring Gary Sinise and Molly Ringwald.

Along with the interview in Vanity Fair‘s June issue are images, which give viewers their first look at the upcoming streaming series.

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FIRST LOOK: Stephen King’s #TheStand is coming to life once again. Starring Alexander Skarsgård, Whoopi Goldberg, James Marsden, and legions more, the upcoming limited series adaptation—which was in production just as COVID-19 hit—puts a new spin on the author’s legendary plague novel. “It’s about the fundamental questions of what society owes the individual and what we owe to each other,” says showrunner Benjamin Cavell. “Over the last however-many years, we have sort of taken for granted the structure of democracy. Now, so much of that is being ripped down to the studs. It’s interesting to see a story about people who are rebuilding it from the ground up.” See more at the link in bio.

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