Having been off and on for years now, it looks as if the long-mooted big screen adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand is again in trouble, and similarly so is the planned Stand miniseries.

At one stage there was a plan in place for writer/director Josh Boone to adapt one of King’s most famous works into a four-movie series, and that idea was altered to include an eight-episode TV miniseries as well. Now, producer Roy Lee has revealed that the movie is again on hold and that the plans for a miniseries have been scrapped.

Speaking to Collider about the movie adaptation, Lee said, “Right now it’s just in a holding pattern trying to figure out how to best make a movie because we’ve toyed with breaking it up into multiple movies, making it into one, making it into two. The latest draft, Josh Boone had written it and he was very anxious to make it but since then has written another script, Revival, which he’s gonna do beforehand, so we’re just waiting for that.”

He then added, “If you do the one movie, you obviously have to take out a big portion of the book, so trying to balance what to keep and what to cut out was a long process because there’s so much to go through. So that’s why it’s been a long process. Right now it’s written as two movies.”

Switching his attention to the miniseries that was believed to lead into the events of the movie adaptation, Lee revealed, “There was definitely talk about doing that but the logistics made it very difficult to try and do a worldwide launch of a movie when the TV component would not necessarily be released at the same time worldwide. So it became a logistic nightmare to try to figure that out, so that plan was abandoned.”

When then asked about whether a straight-up TV series could be an option, a series that didn’t necessarily need to tie to any big screen outing, the producer shot that notion down too. “That’s why there as this discussion about going to HBO or Netflix to try to do a series that launched before a movie,” Lee revealed, “but we’ve been open to everything just to make it work. I think TV would be great but Stephen King believes that his version – the miniseries that was done before – is a very good interpretation of the novel.”

The “done before” miniseries that Roy Lee is referring to is, of course, the 1994 four-parter that starred the likes of Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald and Jamey Sheridan.

The basic premise of The Stand sees a post-apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by a deadly virus. From the ashes of the world we once knew come two factions, each led by essentially the epitome of good and evil.

So, after having many problems over the years, it looks as if a new adaptation of The Stand is again in some big trouble.

As ever, expect more on this as and when it all develops.