The Stand's 2020 remake was largely met with mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike, but the miniseries adapted from Stephen King's epic tome went through numerous revisions during its journey to the small screen. Originally published in 1978, the post-apocalyptic bestseller The Stand was one of King’s earliest huge hits. A sprawling story of a group of survivors who are caught in an eons-old battle between good and evil after a pandemic wipes out most of the world’s population, The Stand’s story was always one that would have trouble translating to the screen thanks to the massive cast of character and perspective-hopping narrative.
That said, 1994 saw the arrival of a television miniseries adaptation starring Gary Sinise, Rob Lowe and Molly Ringwald that earned great critical write-ups and remains well-ed by fans to this day. Like fellow King doorstopper IT, whose 90s Tim Curry-starring miniseries was later remade as a two-part blockbuster, The Stand was remade for television in 2020 despite an actual global pandemic making the show’s timing a touch unfortunate.
However, the ongoing COVID pandemic was the least of the new miniseries' issues. Despite boasting a cast including James Marsden, Amber Heard, and Alexander Skarsgaard, The Stand fumbled numerous vital character and story details, even ruining one of King’s most iconic villains with a weak, uneven iteration of Randall Flagg. However, The Stand almost looked very different, and the story of this Dark Knight himself Christian Bale as King's greatest baddie.
Ben Affleck’s The Stand Movie Trilogy
When a remake of The Stand was first pitched, very few of King’s classic 1990s miniseries had been adapted to the screen for a second time. As such, The Stand was first pitched as a movie adaptation rather than a small screen endeavor, with a director fresh off his Oscar success with Argo was lined up to helm a potential trilogy. Originally, Ben Affleck was set to direct Bourne sequel helmer Paul Greengrass.
Greengrass’ pedigree as an action director made him an interesting choice for a movie version of The Stand, but his work in harrowing real-life dramas such as United 93 or Bloody Sunday could have made him a perfect fit for a story of survivors trying to eke out an existence against impossible odds. However, within a year of Greengrass’s rumored replacement of Affleck, the influential Bourne director was ousted, resulting in a total revamp of The Stand’s adaptation by yet another incoming filmmaker.
A Hard R-Rated The Stand Movie
Stephen King miniseries struggled with their TV-friendly ratings at times, with the latter version, in particular, swinging between moments of shocking gore and out-of-place profanity, oddly restrained sex scenes and a bizarre anti-drug use message that rendered the show’s tone hard to follow.
Christian Bale’s Randall Flagg
Finally, the director who ended up creating 2020’s The Stand miniseries was selected after Cooper’s exit. However, even antagonist Randall Flagg. McConnaughey’s career renaissance - AKA the "McConaissance" - was in full swing when Boone pitched this take in 2014, so this movie version could have been a huge blockbuster like the later IT films became.
However, this version of The Stand never came to fruition either and instead, McConnaughey went on play Flagg in 2017’s disappointing flop The Dark Tower. The charming actor was sadly miscast as the famous villain and lacked the appropriate menace needed, offering viewers a version of Flagg that earned even more critical ire than Skarsgaard’s 2020 version of the villain. Meanwhile, Boone’s movie was stretched to a nine-hour miniseries that ran over twice as long as the original 1994 TV adaptation did, a decision that may have contributed to the new The Stand’s much-criticized nonlinear storytelling structure, among other pacing issues.
The Stand’s Missing Theme Song
A lot of the changes made to the 2020 version of The Stand led to a more disappointing experience for viewers - but there’s one element that was eventually cut from the miniseries that fans are unlikely to miss. Disgraced shock rocker Marilyn Manson and Shooter Jennings recorded a cover of The Doors’ iconic anthem "The End" for the series, but the track was too expensive for the creators to afford and was mercifully absent from the final series.
Manson was also originally set to play The Kid, but the sociopathic character’s role was eventually excised when he couldn’t clear his schedule to shoot the role. Given the mixed response to Ezra Miller’s spirited take on the Trashcan Man, the last thing that the Stephen King adaptation needed was another scenery-chewing co-star to give Trashcan Man even more screen time. As such, it is no great shame that Manson’s role on the 2020 version of The Stand was written out of the finished miniseries.