Movies
‘Harry Potter’ Director Ponders ‘The Stand’
David Yates, who directed the last four Harry Potter films, has the pick of the litter — or should we say, pick of the literature? — at the studio. Warner Bros. Pictures’ top priority is a multi-picture adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand. Vulture’s spies report that Yates is flying into town tomorrow, and has been rereading King’s epic-length supernatural classic. Yates will decide if he wants to do the film sometime in the next two weeks. It is a big commitment, as the studio wants to split the giant book into three parts.
The 1978 “The Stand” is a story of good vs. evil after a virus wipes out most of the American population. While it features dozens of characters (such as the Trashcan Man and Mother Abigail) and overlapping story lines running over many years, the struggle boils down to a group of survivors fighting the Antichrist-like Randall Flagg.
Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner will reunite with their Strange Darling filmmaker JT Mollner for Skeletons, an upcoming creature feature that also stars Brie Larson.
Deadline reports this afternoon that John Goodman has now also signed on.
The film’s cast will also include Ione Skye and Daithí Ó Haragáin.
From Sony Pictures, Skeletons is said to be a “modern take on the creature horror film.”
J.J. Abrams is producing. Mollner will direct from a script by Brian Duffield (Love and Monsters, No One Will Save You), based on the short story Fail-Safe by Philip Fracassi.
Skeletons is “told from the perspective of a young boy who slowly begins to discover that his beloved parents are hiding a disturbing secret about his mother’s true nature.”
The film hails from Infrared, Bad Robot Productions, and Assemble Media.