Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of Stephen King‘s The Shining has earned a reputation over the years as being one of the more horrifying tales of a haunted house, which builds excitement for the upcoming adaptation of the follow-up novel Doctor Sleep. Ewan McGregor, who stars in the film, claims that the upcoming film will be faithful to the source material.
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“Well it’s very faithful to the book, the script,” McGregor confirmed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “If you’ve read the novel, that’s the story we’re going to tell.”
Stephen King’s website describes the story, “Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Danny Torrance 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.”
Kubrick’s The Shining isn’t the only adaptation of the material, as director Mick Garris delivered audiences a mini-series based on the story in the ’90s. Interestingly, Kubrick’s film has become highly regarded as a horror film, though King himself thinks it’s a poor reflection of the source material, leading him to collaborate with Garris for the mini-series.
“If you read the book first, that’s what it’s about, is the alcoholism and the humanity of a guy losing his humanity. That pressure cooker that’s going to blow, that this is a guy saddled by guilt and alcoholism,” Garris previously shared with ComicBook.com. “Whereas Kubrick’s film, at the time, I really was not a fan of the movie at all and I didn’t know anyone who was, but it resonated with young people like teenagers and everything.”
He added, “I recognize it now as a great Kubrick film, but a flawed King adaptation. At that time, that book was my favorite book of all time. I was thinking, ‘God, the genius of Stanley Kubrick and The Shining. This is going to be the scariest movie ever made.’”
Joining McGregor in the film are Rebecca Ferguson, Zahn McClarnon, Alex Essoe, and Carl Lumbly.
Doctor Sleep is slated to hit theaters on January 24, 2020.
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