Dammit. This one hurts, and for a few reasons. The biggest being that the long awaited adaptation of Stephen King’s masterpiece, The Stand, has hit yet another snag in the road leaving a bunch of question marks in the process. If you folks remember, Scott Cooper—director of Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace—was brought on board to replace Ben Affleck, who was originally attached. Now, The Wrap reports that Scott Cooper has fallen off of The Stand, Warner Bros.’ planned film adaptation of the Stephen King novel, according to two individuals familiar with the project. Their reasoning? “Creative differences”, says one of those individuals.
Could this mean the end for The Stand? It’s doubtful. Warner Bros. has been making this project a major priority for quite some time so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got an entire list of talented directors that they’re willing to hand the torch over to. I was pretty bummed about Affleck leaving the film in the first place because he’s been dishing out some solid work for years now, but I was also excited to see Cooper’s approach as he’s known for shooting films as realistically as possible as he always shoots on location. Could this have been where the “creative differences” came into play? Was Cooper’s vision just too expensive because he didn’t want to use green screens and CGI? There’s really no telling at this point, and we’ll probably never know, but for now we all must wait until another director takes the helm.
C’mon Warner Bros., make this shit happen already!
I just want this to get going already. I’m not sure who I want to take over though. Let’s give a smaller horror director a chance. Ti West? Christopher Smith? Drew Goddard?
Those are all great choices! I also think Ben Wheatley would do a solid job. It would be brutal as hell!