Movie rights to The Stand, Stephen King's legendary novel of life after the apocalypse, have sold to CBS Films and Warner Bros. With two studios involved in shaping the project (as well as The Ring producer Roy Lee and Mosaic Film), King fans can now hope for a budget that will do justice with The Stand's story: showing the end of the world and the final showdown between good and evil for the soul of the planet.

The project is still very much in its early stages of development, with no stars attached to it, no writer hired to adapt King's book and no director onboard to talk about their vision for the film. No one at CBS Films or WB even knows yet if The Stand project will try to be adapted as a single movie or spread out over the course of two or even three films. I'm willing to wager that no one in Hollywood would even like to bet if there's an audience out there that would pay to see the full course of King's story run its course over three pictures like The Lord of the Rings. Steve-O's books might sell very well but the box office record of movies made from his work doesn't have that same pizazz.

Lee and Mosaic are developing the creative side of The Stand movie while CBS may give up some money to make it. Warner Bros. will handle the marketing and distribution of the film worldwide.

First published in 1978, and then re-released with hundreds of new pages in 1990, The Stand depicts the end of the world as 99.4% of the population dies from a virus accidentally released from a government laboratory. Survivors try to find each other and then separate intwo two groups, one on the side of good, the other led by a sinister man in black named Randall Flagg. Neither side can let the other one survive to inherit the empty world. With its themes of Biblical apocalypse, supernatural forces, manmade destruction and fate, The Stand has become one of Stephen King's most popular books. An ABC mini-series was aired in the early 1990s that starred Gary Sinese, Molly Ringwald and Rob Lowe. Currently Marvel Comics is adapting The Stand as a series of comic books.