Ben Affleck compares adapting Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’ to ‘Lord of the Rings’

Bringing the classic Stephen King novel, “The Stand,” to the big screen will be no easy task and Ben Affleck, attached to direct, has added a screenwriter David Kajganich (“The Invasion”) to the project.

While speaking with GQ magazine he gives fans an update on the film.

“Right now we’re having a very hard time,” he says. “But I like the idea—it’s like The Lord of the Rings in America. And it’s about how we would reinvent ourselves as a society. If we started all over again, what would we do?”

Described as calm and satisfied in the interview, Affleck projects an even keel that wasn’t there a decade ago.

“I’m in a place where I feel a bit more like I felt after Good Will Hunting, but with a sort of added perspective,” he says. “I feel like I’ve gone round a loop once. And for this lap, it’s more measured. I’m not the most loathsome man in the world. I’ve dropped to number nine.”

Here’s the synopsis for Stephen King’s The Stand:

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death.

And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides — or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abigail — and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.