CBS All Access has released four new photos from the upcoming reboot of Stephen King’sThe Stand. The new images spotlight the more villainous characters portrayed by Alexander Skarsgard, Amber Heard, Ezra Miller, Nat Wolff, and Fiona Dourif.
Based on the 1978 novel of the same name,The Standfollows a group of survivorsliving in a post-apocalyptic world where nearly the entire population has been killed by a weaponized strain of influenza created by the U.S. government. Divided into two factions, the members of these newly established societies come into conflict with each other when they must choose to side with one of two figures haunting their dreams, Mother Abigail and Randall Flagg.
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The new photos unveiled by Entertainment Weekly provide audiences with a glimpse at the more villainous characters who will be enticed by Skarsgard’s Flagg, a supernatural being determined to steer his followers towards the darkness who is featured in the first image. The second image spotlights Nadine Cross, a schoolteacher who believes she has a dark destiny, whomHeard has wanted to portrayfor years. “She’s one of the most nuanced of King’s female characters and not an easy part,” Heard explained during an interview with EW. “She owns and uses her sexuality, but that’s just part of her repertoire, not something that defines her. She also represents for me a kind of a balance between someone who is a villain and a victim.”
Miller’s Trashcan Man, a crazed pyromaniac, is the focus of the third image while Wolff’sLloyd Henreid and Dourif’s The Rat Woman take the spotlight in the fourth photo. Although Henreid already serves as Flagg’s right-hand man, Trashcan Man may yet prove to be useful in the villain’splan to rid the world of all that is good. “Trash is the underestimated and misinterpreted amongst us; the divine genius concealed beneath apparent mental illness and personal dysfunction,” Miller wrote of his character in an email to EW. “The world hinges on people like Trashcan Man — mad artists and depraved engineers, constantly overlooked in how pivotal they ultimately can be.”
CBS All Access' adaptation ofThe Standwill consist of 10 episodes, with new material penned by King for the final episode of the miniseries, which will serve as a coda to the original novel. The story had previously been adapted for television in 1994 as a4-episode miniseriesfor CBS.
While the story of a deeply divided world handling the devastation of a plague while an egomaniac lures others to his sinister cause may feel too familiar to some, the similarities to real-world current events are, of course, coincidental. King’s inspiration forthe original novelwas actually an event known as the 968 Dugway incident, in which six thousand sheep in Utah were accidentally killed by a nerve gas leak caused by a U.S. Army weapons test.
The Standwill premiere exclusively on CBS All Access on Thursday, December 17.
