Oh, floating Skarsgårds. That can’t be good.
We’ve had a few teasing pictures, but CBS has dropped our first actual look at its adaptation of Stephen King’s iconic weirdness-in-the-post-pandemic novel, The Stand.
Set in the aftermath of the accidental release of a lab-created virus that infects and kills much of humanity, The Stand follows pockets of survivors as they are drawn to two opposing sides in a strange, supernatural war between the forces of chaos and order: on the one side, Mother Abigail (played here by Whoopi Goldberg), on the other, Randall Flagg, an evil figure who appears in The Stand and throughout King’s oeuvre as a demonic being that is, basically, the Devil. This time he’s played by Alexander Skarsgård And, for a brief moment here, he’s here floating sinisterly.
Editor’s Note: The official trailer appears region-locked in Australia, but it has been re-uploaded by other users.
It’s maybe the standout moment of these brief snapshots of footage, which don’t really give us much insight otherwise into the biblical tussle that The Stand’s post-pandemic survival story is really about. It’s probably for the best right now anyway that the show puts its lens on that conflict, rather than the all-too-real feeling of what it’s like living through a (still incredibly dangerous but decidedly less lethal, in comparison) global pandemic’s aftermath.
The Stand — which was directed by The New Mutants’ Josh Boone also stars James Marsden, Amber Heard, Greg Kinnear, Odessa Young, Henry Zaga, Jovan Adepo, Owen Teague, Brad William Henke, Daniel Sunjata, Marilyn Manson, Nat Wolff, Eion Bailey, Katherine McNamara, Hamish Linklater, and Heather Graham — hits CBS All Access on December 17.
Stay tuned for where it’ll air in Australia.