Ben Affleck was attached for two years to adapt Stephen King’s The Stand, but that fell through when he was offered an opportunity to play Batman. Then Out of the Furnace director Scott Cooper signed on to rewrite and direct the project, only to leave a few months later over creative differences. Now The Fault in Our Stars director Josh Boone is in early talks to take over. Boone is a longtime fan of King’s. As he told Collider, as a kid, his parents wouldn’t let him read King, so he’d rip the covers off religious books and glue them to King’s. Eventually, when his parents found his copy of The Stand, they burned it in a fireplace. So Boone sent King a letter saying how much he loved his books, with a few books to sign. King sent back the books with a “beautiful letter†written in the front cover of each. Moved by King’s generosity, Boone’s parents allowed him to read King again. Years later, King would appear as himself in Boone’s feature debut, 2012’s Stuck in Love. Screw The Stand, they should make a movie about Stephen King mentoring a young Christian boy from afar.