Here’s a surprise: you know that upcoming miniseries adaptation of The Stand? The one that premieres next month? Well, it turns out that Ezra Miller has a part in it, and it’s been kept a secret all this time. Miller is playing The Trashcan Man, a schizophrenic pyromaniac who is drawn towards Randall Flagg, the […]
Oh, something new about The Stand! Do I like this? I dunno if I like this. Maybe I just don’t like Ezra Miller after that weird assault footage went viral?
I am so darkly amused by the fact that none of the Stand trailers so far have mentioned that the story takes place after a deadly pandemic. Maybe they oughta just lean into it at this point.
The Queen but mostly Princess Diana! Honestly I always had a lot of sympathy for Princess Di. She was just a messed up kid thrown into the royal family and expected to fend for herself while everyone treated her like shit. (Wonder if they’ll mention the quite significant age difference between her and Charles :/ )
Okay The Watch doesn’t look terrible as a show (I guess) but it very obviously has NOTHING to do with the Discworld series it’s based on. So why even bother? Ugggh. Rhianna Pratchett’s thoughts are also mine.
To my GENUINE SHOCK The Stand is… actually still happening?! I mean, you can see why I’m surprised, right? But hey, there’s pictures and everything!
Whoopi Goldberg as Abigail looks fantastic. Harold looks… thin, and I really wish they’d left him fat like in the books but eh. Flagg I’m not sure about. But heck, despite you know THE THING THAT IS HAPPENING, I still can’t wait for this.
The Man in Black makes his return to the screen, only the world looks a lot different than we remember.
The first photos from CBS All Access miniseries The Stand, a fresh adaptation of Stephen King’s pandemic-apocalypse novel, have arrived with looks at Big Little Lies’ Alexander Skarsgard as demonic hell-raiser Randall Flagg and Whoopi Goldberg as benevolent Mother Abagail, courtesy of Vanity Fair.
Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abagail
Jovan Adepo as Larry Underwood & Heather Graham as Rita Blakemoor
Owen Teague as Harold Lauder
Owen Teague as Harold Lauder & Odessa Young as Frannie Goldsmith
Alexander Skarsgård as Randall Flagg
Alexander Skarsgård as Randall Flagg & Nat Wolff as Lloyd Henreid
Odessa Young as Frannie Goldsmith
The story of The Stand sees what happens when a virus, a man-made biological weapon that goes out of control, wipes out about 99 percent of the human population. Those that remain are left with the choice to follow their more baser, primordial instincts, or work together to build something good. That’s where Randall and Mother Abagail find themselves in opposite camps.
“[Flagg is] so charming and he’s so handsome, and so powerful — I mean genuinely powerful, able to perform these sort of miracles where he could levitate himself and he has these actual powers,” Taylor Elmore, who showruns the series with Benjamin Cavell, told Vanity Fair. “And yet he needs this adulation and this kind of worship from these people whom he’s summoned to him. He needs to have them make a show all the time of how grateful they are to him.”
Cavell makes the obvious connection to our current reality: “And there’s something fundamentally weak about that. Does it remind you of someone you know?”
The new version of The Stand has cast Alexander Skarsgard as Randall Flagg! And you know, I was looking really forward to seeing who they cast because I can’t picture Flagg in my head. That’s the weird thing. When I try to imagine what such a person might look like, I can’t picture anything except evil eyes and a terrifying smile stuck on a man’s body.
…Yeah, I reckon this guy could pull that off. I have never seen him in anything but I’m told he’s a good villain. And he’s attractive, which is one of the main things about Flagg. (And pretty much the only description of him there was in the book?)
But what really sold me is that his brother Bill plays Pennywise the clown! That’s exactly the weird meta delightfulness I read Stephen King books for in the first place.
The Stand is one of Stephen King’s most impressive and beloved works. It’s an epic story set in a post-apocalyptic world recently ravaged by a deadly outbreak, and follows a group of survivors who divide into factions and travel the United States in search of meaning. First published in 1978, the 800-page book deals with themes…
I can’t describe how excited I am about this. Few books have ever filled me with terror as much as The Stand. And James Marsden is gonna make a fantastic Stu, I can feel it.
I’m most looking forward to seeing who’ll play Harold and Flagg, though. You can’t afford to miscast them. And I very much want to see Dayna, she was always my favourite, and she goes out like a true badass.
But the bit about the new ending! A NEW ENDING! Frankly I always thought the very last part of The Stand was, to put it bluntly, a bit shit. If King has something better cooking up I want to be first in line to see it.
Somethings I think about how horny, petty asshole Phil Tandy Miller is essentially what horny, petty asshole Harold Lauder could have been if not for that whole pesky seduced-by-the-devil thing
(and, you know, the whole operating-in-different-genres thing)
