Soon after the Netflix release of his Stephen King adaptation GERALD'S GAME, director Mike Flanagan said that one of the other King projects he'd most like to work on would be an adaptation of DOCTOR SLEEP, the author's 2013 follow-up to his classic THE SHINING. Less than a month later, it was announced that Flanagan would be directing DOCTOR SLEEP for Warner Bros., and now the project is on the fast track, heading toward a release date that's just over a year and a half away.
The studio has scheduled DOCTOR SLEEP for a January 24, 2020 release – meaning it will be in theatres in the year that marks the 40th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING adaptation (which, yes, Stephen King still hates).
Flanagan is rewriting the screenplay written by executive producer Akiva Goldsman. His producing partner Trevor Macy will be producing the film with Jon Berg of Vertigo Entertainment.
King's novel told the following story:
On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”
Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.
I haven't read the book yet and never would have imagined that a sequel to THE SHINING would involve people with the shining ability giving off steam when they're killed, or immortals that live off that steam, but I'm open to seeing how this works.
If you'd like to pick up a copy of the novel, you can do so at THIS LINK.