Rebecca Ferguson joins Ewan McGregor in The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

It's very exciting to me that Mike Flanagan is directing an adaptation of Stephen King's DOCTOR SLEEP, the author's follow-up to his novel THE SHINING. With one of the best genre directors working today bringing us a sequel to one of the best horror stories of the last several decades, this should be something special.

Ewan McGregor is signed on to play the grown-up Danny Torrance in the film, and now some more exciting casting news has come out: joining McGregor in the film is Rebecca Ferguson.

Ferguson had a great breakthrough role in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION, and while some of the films she has worked on since (LIFE, THE SNOWMAN) haven't been so great, I'm always glad to hear that she has been cast in something. Hopefully DOCTOR SLEEP and the upcoming MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT will be an improvement over the other things she's been in lately.

The casting announcement didn't offer any information on Ferguson's DOCTOR SLEEP role. I haven't read King's novel, but looking over a synopsis it seems like she could be a contender for a villainous character called "Rose the Hat".

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.

Warner Bros. will be giving DOCTOR SLEEP a theatrical release on January 24, 2020.