Warner Bros. has worked on a new version of The Stand for a few years, using Stephen King‘s post-apocalyptic novel as a basis for work by a few different creative teams. Most recently Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars), a lifelong fan of King’s work, came on board to write and direct a single-film adaptation of the novel. A single film — even a three-hour R-rated one — seems insufficient to properly adapt the novel which felt heavily condensed when done as a 360-minute mini-series for television. Now King himself suggests that we could see The Stand split into more than one film, though he’s cautious about saying too much.

King told MTV:

I think that his take is terrific — and don’t count on it being one film. There’s talk about doing it in an entirely different and innovative way, and I don’t want to go into it because that’s Josh’s baby. … He’s hugely ambitious and hugely energetic, so we’ll see what happens.

Adapting the novel into a single film would count as “hugely ambitious,” as the story features a huge cast of characters who all survive the rapid spread of a terrifically deadly virus, and which are split into good and evil factions as people seek to rebuild society once the virus has run its course.

But that comment is oddly suggestive. “Different and innovative” suggests more than a two-film split. Could we see something along the lines of the film+TV series approach that Ron Howard, Akiva Goldsman and Brian Grazer wanted to use for another King adaptation, The Dark Tower? At this point it’s too soon to tell, but

Here’s the video: