Josh Boone, who directed hit adaptation of the John Green novel The Fault In Our Stars, has been tapped to work on high-profile projects such as the Anne Rice novel adaptation of Vampire Chronicles and X-Men: The New Mutants, as well as Stephen King’s The Stand.

Boone has reportedly been hired with producer Michael De Luca and author Stephen King to develop the adaptation of Revival, based on King’s 2014 bestseller about a charismatic preacher who loses his faith when his wife and child are killed in a tragic accident.

Boone and De Luca have submitted the script to Universal, where the producer has a first-look deal.

The Stand Mike Perkins cover comic bookBoone also has written a script for a feature adaptation of The Stand. Arguably King’s most ambitious and definitive novel at 823 pages, the book has seen several A-list filmmakers come and go at Warner Bros.

While Boone said he’s determined to make that film, and has practically set a cast, with verbal commitments, it’s going to take longer.

Warner Bros’ option has run its course, and the project has reverted back to CBS Films, which could place it at another studio or make it through an arrangement it has to share big-budget fare with Lionsgate.

Boone has cleared his schedule for Revival, which he hopes to direct this year. Rumors are that he’s already discussed with actors the two leads—Reverend Charles Jacobs and Jamie Morton, who meets the preacher as a boy and narrates his descent into madness and evil.

“I’ve read every book Stephen King has written, multiple times; he taught me how to write characters,” Boone said.

“When I read The Stand, it was literally from under my bed. I was raised by evangelical Christians, who believed in The Rapture. I wasn’t allowed to read Stephen King books for a large part of my childhood. I ripped the cover off this Frank E. Peretti book This Present Darkness, a Christian bestseller, and put it on The Stand, because they were roughly the same size. I would read these books under the bed and hide them in the box spring, like normal kids stashed their pornography. My mom found my King stash and they burned the books in the fireplace. I still have a picture in a photo album of this giant pile of ashes in my parents’ fireplace.”

“When I read Revival, I was like, man, did you write this for me? I’d been on both sides of that pendulum. I call myself a non-believer, now, and when I moved to LA, it was like Neo being pulled out of The Matrix. Oh, my god, none of that stuff is true! But it was what I’d been taught and what I believed in since childhood. I believed in the devil, in Jesus, and even now as a non-believer, I’m still fascinated by that world and Revival is the scariest thing he’s written since Pet Sematary. He tricks you, drawing you in gently, with that narrator’s voice and a long time span that reminds you of The Shawshank Redemption or The Green Mile, and then he pulls that rug from under you in that last act and you’re like, oh my god, what have I gotten myself into? The secret of electricity starts as this wonderful thing and it gets progressively darker. Jamie calls Charles on it, but sticks around, because he, like the rest of us, wants to know what’s on the other side. It’s powerhouse stuff, and two of the best characters he has written since Annie Wilkes [played by Kathy Bates in an Oscar-winning turn in Misery]. I still intend to make The Stand, but I need more time, and when I asked Steve about Revival, he put me together with Mike De Luca.

“The thing about Stephen King is, if he gets you young, if you’re at the right age when you start picking up his books, you will travel with him and his will be the voice you most like to hear when you open a book,” Boone said.