Pencil this in for the holiday season. The Stephen King adaptation The Stand is coming to CBS All Access on December 17. TVLine first reported the news.
In case you’re not familiar with the story behind it, here’s the book description:
This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides — or are chosen.
Though there was previously a 1994 ABC miniseries adaptation, this one’s bound to be different. Stephen King himself is set to write the final episode, which will include a new coda not found in the original novel.
Cast includes James Marsden, Amber Heard, Odessa Young, Henry Zaga, Whoopi Goldberg, Jovan Adepo & Alexander Skarsgård.
Showrunner Benjamin Cavell had this to say in a statement:
“During the two years we spent making The Stand, we all felt the responsibility of adapting what may be the most beloved work of one of the world’s most beloved storytellers, but none of us could have imagined that Stephen King’s 40-year-old masterpiece about a global pandemic would come to be so eerily relevant. We’re honored to tell this sprawling, epic story, including a new coda that Stephen King has wanted to add for decades. We’re so proud of this show and its attempt to find meaning and hope in the most uncertain of times. We can’t wait to share it with the world.”