10 Reasons Why 'The Stand' Is Nearly Impossible to Adapt

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Given how long and strange it is, The Stand might not be the best starting point for anyone who’s yet to read a Stephen King novel… but, at the same time, it might also be the “most” Stephen King novel. It has a bit of everything that makes him the writer he is, for better or worse. It’s wildly ambitious, dark, scary, goofy, endlessly compelling, sometimes disappointing, and startlingly immersive.

The original novel version of The Stand clocked in at a bit under 900 pages, while the uncut version is approximately 1200. It’s an epic, in every sense of the word, and one that’s proven difficult to translate to either film or television (there were miniseries attempts in 1994 and 2020, with some missteps made in each). As for why The Stand would need a ton of care if it was to ever – somehow – get a good screen adaptation? The following reasons are some of the most noteworthy and obvious.

1 'The Stand' Is Kind of Every Genre at Once

Adventure, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, romance, thriller, drama, dystopian etc.

The Stand doesn’t waste time getting started, with things kicking off because of a viral outbreak of a deadly superflu. It spreads over the course of several hundred harrowing pages, with just about everyone who’s exposed ending up dead. Those who survive are split mostly into two sides, one being a force for good, and the other side being unequivocally evil (the latter reside in Las Vegas as their base, so go figure).

From this premise, The Stand does everything and goes everywhere, all at once, but not in a martial arts movie from 2022 kind of way. It’s not as focused on horror as other King stories, but the creepy stuff’s still there. There’s adventure, some romantic drama, sci-fi, fantasy… there’s a lot, in short. And trying to condense all these different genres into a single movie or miniseries is harder to do than in a novel; one that has more than 1000 pages to work with.

2 There's a Character Who's Ridiculously Old

Mother Abagail is 108!

Because of the way The Stand is narrated, and, again, because of its length, the extremely long life of Mother Abagail Freemantle (who leads the aforementioned forces of good) gets explored with quite a lot of detail. She’s 108 years old at the time most of the novel’s action is set, which makes her difficult to cast to begin with, considering not many people make it to that age, let alone remain active as actors… but then there’s also the question of how to de-age her if her past is to be explored.

The solution seems to be finding an older actress and aging them up (done with Ruby Dee in 1994 and Whoopi Goldberg in 2020), and not really spending time extensively on the backstory stuff. That’s a shame, but it’s probably more of a practical thing, and something cut for time. Perhaps if they wanted to gender-flip the character, Clint Eastwood could play, uh, Father Anthony? He’s still active in the world of film, and is nearly 95. Plus, Stephen King clearly loves Eastwood, considering how often Eastwood's been referenced throughout his body of work.

3 Explicit Violence and Sex

King gets Kin(g)ky

Books can get a bit more extreme than movies, especially when it comes to sex, and perhaps even to some extent when it comes to violence. Concerning the latter, violence can only go so far even when there’s an R-rating attached, and translating The Stand from page to screen in a true or close-to-literal sense would mean staging some pretty shocking, gross, and unpleasant scenes.

Now, a low-budget movie might be able to go all-out with sex and violence, given such a movie might only need to find a niche audience to turn a profit. But a movie or miniseries of The Stand would need a solid to high budget, given it’s an epic story and all, so keeping the adaptation direct – and including some of the most extreme stuff – would put the filmmakers at a crossroads of sorts. There would be, at best, some serious compromise.

4 So Many Characters

Seriously, even if most of the world's population dies, there are still many left

Yes, more than 99% of the world’s population lies dead at the end of The Stand’s first act, thanks to the sheer deadliness of that aforementioned superflu. But that still leaves plenty of people left alive, what with the world – pre-flu – containing billions of human beings. And these people do congregate, pick sides, and then eventually make their titular stands.

And Stephen King went pretty wild with the sheer number of characters he wanted to include, as there are so many here that could be considered “main characters,” with plenty of them being spread out and off in different areas a good deal of the time. There are various important supporting characters, and then lots of background characters who still have names, personalities, and occasional bits of dialogue. Working out who to cut – or who to push further into the background – isn't easy, for anyone undertaking some kind of The Stand adaptation.

5 There's Enough Story to Fill Three Epic Movies

It might need 'The Lord of the Rings' treatment

It’s not just all the genres that make The Stand’s story feel big, expansive, and ambitious; it’s the scale of the narrative itself. It’s always moving forward across 1200 pages, and even when characters settle into some kind of groove (principally, once people pick sides to join), there’s very little sitting around or wasting time. There’s always something tense or unease brewing in the background, and ticking bombs – literal or otherwise – do eventually explode every time.

You get a lot of story when there are a lot of characters, too, and giving everyone the sort of role they deserve while having the story itself flow naturally and without any awkward jumps would be daunting. Perhaps the best option would be dividing the whole thing up into three moving The Lord of the Rings-style, but even then – like with that series – there would be certain narrative beats that might have to be cut or severely condensed.

6 All the Stuff with Trashcan Man and The Kid

Would anyone want to film/watch that?

Admittedly, this next point encompasses a few previously mentioned points, namely the notion that The Stand has some weird stuff, some extreme content, and a good many characters. One character – perhaps the most twisted of the novel – has been cut from both miniseries adaptations to date, though readers of the uncut version of the novel (he was also cut from the original published version) will be regrettably familiar with “The Kid.”

For a long stretch of The Stand, The Kid terrorizes, antagonizes, and does unspeakably awful things to another character known as Trashcan Man, and it goes on and on in the book, being effectively grim, nauseating, and nightmarish. It might well be the most horrific part of The Stand, which is something when it’s written by someone well-known for horror, but making it as effective on screen as it is on the page might well involve crossing a line as far as decency goes, and would put the adaptation into potentially NC-17/X-rated territory.

7 Action Scenes That Last Minutes on Page, But Seconds in Practice

Par for the course with King, really

The Stand isn't quite definable as a full-on action book, but it definitely has some action scenes that are stretched out thanks to the detail with which Stephen King describes them. Chapter 47 is probably the best example, with a gunfight that breaks out between two groups of characters while on the road. It makes one think of what Roland says in The Dark Tower books, regarding gun battles being over in moments, even if one spends great amounts of time preparing for them.

That scene and other set pieces are great as extended action scenes in the book, but it would be very hard to have them be just as impactful and continually exciting on screen without having everything in slow motion… and that might be frustrating, then, for different reasons. But that’s something that most adaptations have to grapple with, when it comes to detailed and prolonged action on the page not necessarily playing out the same in real-time, on film (or on TV).

8 Randall Flagg is a Difficult Character to Cast

Sorry, Alexander Skarsgård

Randall Flagg is the evil counterpart to Mother Abagail, and is a great enough villain that King himself has reused him – in various ways – as some kind of antagonist in other books he’s written. He is pure evil in every single way, which can come across as a bit hammy if the wrong actor is picked, or if the adaptation is hampered in terms of how far Flagg can go, as far as his actions are concerned.

The 2020 adaptation almost did a good job with Flagg, because anyone who’s seen Succession knows Alexander Skarsgård has what it takes to play a truly despicable antagonist, but it still wasn’t quite right. This Skarsgård was alright, but not as perfect a fit as that other Skarsgård (Bill) was when playing another iconic Stephen King antagonist: Pennywise in It. Funnily enough, both Flagg and Abagail are probably the two hardest characters to get right in an adaptation of The Stand.

9 Having to Create "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?"

It just sounds like a lousy song

It’s one thing to read the lyrics to a song that’s probably not very good, but adapting The Stand means having to subject the viewer to more than just the lyrics. Inevitably, a movie or TV version of The Stand will have to feature “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?” at some point, given Larry Underwood is a significant character, and that song was the one hit he had as an artist, with it somehow getting popular right before the superflu ended the world.

Anyway, this is a petty reason to be skeptical about The Stand adaptations, but even if the song is meant to be annoying, having it play as many times on screen as it’s mentioned in the text would probably be maddening. The man might be righteous, but it’s hard to imagine the song ever actually being the same.

10 That Weird Climax

Go out with a bang(?)

Without going into details (even saying there’s an explosion might be too much), the novel version of The Stand has a bold, ridiculous, and kind of great ending, yet it’s one that could risk feeling anticlimactic in any other medium. Indeed, the miniseries versions both try to retain the core of what happens, but it works better in the book. Even then, some might feel it’s a bit of a weak climax in the original novel, but you kind of get used to weird and/or simple endings if you read enough Stephen King.

There’s also a lengthy section of the book right after the climax that, while great to read about, would feel extremely strange if accurately adapted. In short, it would be the equivalent of Jaws (1975) showing the two survivors of the whole ordeal swimming back to shore in real-time. It’s just one of many things that’s better in the book version than any adaptation could probably ever be. So, in short, though it takes a lot of time to read The Stand, you should. And it’s only really worth watching either miniseries if you have read the original text and still feel interested in seeing what does and doesn’t work when the story’s put onto the small screen.

NEXT: Every Oscar-Nominated Stephen King Movie, Ranked

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