The miniseries illustrate, for me anyway, how not to make a movie or series of a King novel. It failed entirely (again, just imo though), although it is fairly popular. King characters rarely work on screen the way they are in his books. They need a bit of work, or they can come across as absurd and totally lacking any connection with reality. (sure, it's television, I get that. Hyperbole and making things larger than life is normal and inevitable. But still)
And then you get mediocre actors, or some that really were not at their best, like Molly Ringwald (godawful performance), Rob Lowe and even Gary Sinise didn't do that well imo.
The Stand isn't that easy to get on a movie screen. The ending is ridiculous, even in the novel. That's easy enough to change though, happens quite a bit in series or movies based on books. Watchmen, Game of Thrones (not the ending obviously), Under the Dome (again, no idea about the ending, but the story itself has been altered)...
Four movies does sound like one too many. The novel itself feels like three parts: the 'accident' and the spreading of Captain Tripps, the gathering of good and evil in their respective cities, the final fight. Nevertheless, the book does need a fair amount of time. I love the book because King really did a great job on the buildup of the story. (definitely in the uncut version) It creates a certain atmosphere, a connection with the survivors, which was almost completely lost in the miniseries.
I hope they can get it right, or that this even happens to begin with.
Contrary to the sequel King is apparently planning to write for The Stand. Now that's something I hope he never gets done. But who am I kidding? He probably already wrote the darn thing since the rumour started last week.