Doctor Sleep Director Mike Flanagan Defends Marvel Movies

Mike Flanagan is the horror director best known for helming Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, and he’s currently promoting his upcoming film, Doctor Sleep, which is a follow-up to Stephen King’s The Shining. In a recent interview with CinePop, the director was asked about his thoughts on Martin Scorsese‘s criticism of Marvel films. The legendary director known for films such as Goodfellas and Taxi Driver has been under fire this month for comparing Marvel films to theme parks and saying they are “not cinema.” When asked about Marvel movies and Scorsese’s comments, Flanagan was quick to come to the defense of superhero films.

“I cried at Endgame,” Flanagan revealed. “Martin Scorsese said, ‘movies are dreams,’ you know? I don’t think you can look at a Marvel movie, superhero movies, you know, good versus evil and those epic stories, I don’t think you can say one dream is better or more authentic than another.”

He added, “I think cinema encapsulates so many different visions, so many different types of stories, and it’s all about giving people a shared experience, and characters that they can grab on to. Marvel movies absolutely do that for me, so no I don’t agree.”

Flanagan’s new film has the difficult task of not only serving as an adaptation of the Doctor Sleep novel, but also serving as a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s iconic adaptation of The Shining.

“It is an adaptation of the novel Doctor Sleep, which is Stephen King’s sequel to his novel The Shining,” Flanagan confirmed with press earlier this year. “But this also exists very much in the same cinematic universe that Kubrick established in his adaptation of The Shining. And reconciling those three, at times very different sources has been kind of the most challenging and thrilling part of this creatively, for us.”

Doctor Sleep stars Ewan McGregor as the grown-up version of The Shining‘s child protagonist, Danny Torrance. It also stars Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible 5 & 6) as a predatory cult leader; Kyliegh Curran as girl with a power “shining”; Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek) as the girl’s doctor; Zahn McClarnon (Westworld) as the cult leader’s henchman; and Alex Essoe as Danny’s mother, Wendy Torrance.

Check out Doctor Sleep when it lands in theaters on November 8th.