THE ONE PERCENT

SHOWRUNNER BENJAMIN CAVELL TALKS GOOD VS EVIL IN THE LATEST TV ADAPTATION OF STEPHEN KING’S CLASSIC POST-APOCALYPSE NOVEL

- BRYAN CAIRNS

THE UPCOMING NINE-EPISODE miniseries The Stand arrives feeling eerily relevant. Based on Stephen King’s sprawling 1978 novel of the same name, this epic tale takes place in a landscape ravaged by a mysterious virus that has wiped out 99% of the planet’s population. Production commenced on 19 September 2019 in Vancouver and wrapped early in March 2020, just before the Covid-19 outbreak caused everything and everyone to lock down. As the number of infected people continues to skyrocket, showrunner Benjamin Cavell admits that the pandemic could affect the audience’s viewing experience.

“Obviously, we’ve wondered about that,” Cavell tells SFX. “The answer is it’s impossible to predict. But for me, The Stand is not really about a pandemic. The pandemic is the mechanism by which the world gets emptied out and our characters find themselves as the only people left. They come together for this existential struggle between good and evil for what’s left and who gets to rebuild.

The hope is that you are able to make this thing our own, which I think we have done

“It’s also why we’ve chosen to tell the story in a non-linear way,” he adds. “Unlike the book, unlike the original 1994 miniseries, we are not going completely in chronological order and making people sit through episode after episode of the world dying. That’s not what we are doing. It’s this story that comes after all that. As Stephen King has said, this is his attempt to do The Lord Of The Rings in the United States.”