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Pretty much everyone agrees that author Stephen King’s best, most important work is The Stand. Though I wonder if the book is something like the Bible or James Joyce’s Ulysses; sure, everyone has a copy lying around their house and the thought of reading it sure is nice but geez it’s really long, longer than the bible even and I’m not sure if I want to invest all that time and energy into it and surely there has to be a movie version of the book right?

Guilty as charged on all accounts.  Except for owning the Bible.  Be that as it may, The Stand is always a good idea until you actual feel how heavy it is.  Unfortunately, the televsion movie while compelling is sorta not that good and probably longer than ole Chuck Heston’s The Ten Commandments. I think it may star Molly Ringwald, which no one wanted to have happen in 1994.

So what’s the happy medium?  A comic book graphic novel version courtesy of Marvel, the company that also published a graphic novel adaptation of King’s The Dark Tower epic.

Head to UGO for the first six pages of the first book.

Plot: It begins here: the apocalyptic epic battle between good and evil based on the classic bestseller by master of horror Stephen King! On a secret army base in the Californian desert, something has gone horribly, terribly wrong. Something that will send Charlie Campion and his wife and daughter fleeing in the middle of the night. Unfortunately for the Campion family–and the rest of America–they are unaware that all three of them are carrying a deadly cargo: A virus that will spread from person to person like wildfire, triggering a massive wave of disease and death, prefacing humanity’s last stand! Be there as writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four) teams with artist Mike Perkins (Captain America) for the first arc in the next great Stephen King event!

I know lots of people are heeeyuge Stephen King fans. One would think that I fall squarely into that camp, however, for some reason I missed the Stephen King boat. It’s not that I don’t like him, actually what I have read by him (his short stories, The Gunslinger series, and his book on writing) I’ve really enjoyed.

It’s just that, well, there is no excuse really. His oeuvre is massive and it’s difficult to jump into the King pool when he seemingly writes a new book every six-months. Still, I’ve watched the movies based on his books and have enjoyed them a lot, even the crappy made for television movies.

So where should I begin? Some suggest The Stand, but it’s nearly 1,000 pages. Others have suggested The Talisman, a book he wrote with Peter Straub. A Canadian filmmaker named Mathieu Ratthe has loved that book so much he’s been dying to make it into a movie.

But the movie rights for The Talisman were bought by Steven Spielberg back in 1984 and he has never really made a move to direct or produce a film version of that story. So what’s a Canadian filmmaker to do? He ponies up some funding and puts together a four-minute scene from the movie in hopes of attracting attention.

“My main objective for creating this piece,” Ratthe says “is to demonstrate my directing ability and my vision to the producers who own the rights to the story: STEVEN SPIELBERG & KATHLEEN KENNEDY.”

And attention he’s got. For a low budget effort, this is pretty good. He called in some favors and was able to get actor Cameron Bright (Birth, X-Men: Last Stand) to play the lead and even got an FX company that worked on 300 to do the effects.

Several efforts have been made to make this a movie, most recently in 2003 by screenwriter Ehren Kruger, but most who have read that script thought it was shoddy. TNT was going to make a six-part miniseries based on a retooled version of Kruger’s script, but that was scrapped due to budgetary concerns.

It’s doubtful if this will get the filmmaker a meeting, but if there is justice or karma or whatever makes the world go round, Ratthe will be rewarded for his efforts here.

Should Spielberg take a chance on an unknown filmmaker? Sometimes passion is all it takes. Well, passion and talent. You have to have talent. Based on his other film, Mathieu Ratthe has some good chops, as they say.

The Talisman tells the story of a twelve years old kid who must go on a fantastic quest in search of the Talisman, in order to save his dying mother. I should also say that Whitney was the first to find this story and since then it’s simply blown up appearing on just about every major movie website. Thanks Whit!

John “The Cougar” Mellencamp and horror icon Stephen King have teamed up to produce the musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, which is set to open in Atlanta circa April 2009.

According to Billboard:

Mellencamp wrote the score, while King wrote the script. Mellencamp previously said the play, which is set in Lake Belle Reve, Miss., in 1957, is about “two brothers; they’re 19 years old or 20, maybe 18 or 21, who are very competitive and dislike each other immensely. The father takes them to the family vacation place, a cabin that the boys hadn’t been to since they were kids.”

“What has happened is that the father had two older brothers who hated each other and killed each other in that cabin,” he continued. “There’s a confederacy of ghosts who also live in this house. The older [dead] brothers are there, and they speak to the audience, and they sing to the audience.

“Ghost Brothers” will be directed by Peter Askin (”Hedwig and the Angry Inch”), who hopes to prep the production for an eventual Broadway run.

Mellencamp also told Billboard that King is “the sweetest guy you could ever meet; there’s nothing weird about him or demonic or anything like that.”

Always gives me faith when the plot is that convoluted.   There are some ghosts and they’re dead in a cabin somewhere and then they sing.  You know cause that’s scary.

Anyway, do you suppose it’s as scary as Oooooooouuuuuuurrrrrrrr Country?