Next month we'll be traveling back to the Overlook Hotel with DOCTOR SLEEP, Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Stephen King's sequel to "The Shining." The film centers on a now-adult Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) as he confronts his torturous past, and as we've seen from the trailers, DOCTOR SLEEP will take us back to several iconic locations from Stanley Kubrick's vision of THE SHINING, a film which Stephen King doesn't exactly love.
Warner Bros. have released two new posters for DOCTOR SLEEP, which go out of their way to remind us of the movie's connection to THE SHINING. I'm a fan, particularly of the last one.
Although the novel didn't return to the Overlook Hotel, Mike Flanagan knew it was something he wanted to do. "It was a question of, 'How do we try to combine those two worlds in a way that's going to make Stephen feel really satisfied with what we did and also honor the legacy of the Kubrick film and what it means to cinephiles?'" Flanagan said, but it was important than he get the blessing of Stephen King himself, otherwise he wouldn't have done the film at all. "[The Shining is,] I think, one of the most influential, if not the most influential horror movie of all time. It would seem like such a wasted opportunity to revisit Dan Torrance and not revisit the Overlook Hotel," Flanagan explained. "So that was a tough call and we needed to get Stephen on board. But when we explained how we wanted to do it, he actually was really enthusiastic about it. Which was a pleasant surprise. If he had not wanted to do that, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't have done the movie."
The official synopsis for DOCTOR SLEEP:
Still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook, Dan Torrance has fought to find some semblance of peace. But that peace is shattered when he encounters Abra, a courageous teenager with her own powerful extrasensory gift, known as the “shine.” Instinctively recognizing that Dan shares her power, Abra has sought him out, desperate for his help against the merciless Rose the Hat and her followers, The True Knot, who feed off the shine of innocents in their quest for immortality. Forming an unlikely alliance, Dan and Abra engage in a brutal life-or-death battle with Rose. Abra’s innocence and fearless embrace of her shine compel Dan to call upon his own powers as never before—at once facing his fears and reawakening the ghosts of the past.
DOCTOR SLEEP will hit theaters on November 8, 2019.