Divisive Adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining Coming to Blu-ray

Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining might be considered by many to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time, but this hasn't always been the reaction to the film, with King himself not being a fan of the experience. King's disappointment with the movie saw him collaborate with filmmaker Mick Garris to develop a three-episode adaptation of the book, which is getting a Blu-ray release from Scream Factory. While the special features have yet to be confirmed, the distributor has a history of offering up expansive supplemental materials on their releases. The Shining is available now for preorder before it hits shelves on March 12th.

Scream Factory describes the release, "110 Empty Hotel Rooms -- Filled With Horror! Jack Torrance (Steven Weber) and his family (Rebecca De Mornay and Courtland Mead) move into the sprawling, vacant Overlook Hotel to get away from it all. Away from the alcoholism that derails Jack's writing career. Away from the violent outbursts that mar Jack's past. But Jack's young son Danny knows better. He possesses a psychic gift called the shining -- a gift the hotel's vile spirits desperately want."

"In the hands of Stephen King, the 'dead' Overlook comes horrifyingly alive. Phantoms lurk, the message 'redrum' appears with scary frequency, and even the garden topiary lurches into macabre existence in this atmospheric shocker scripted by King from his own novel and directed by ace King adaptor Mick Garris (Sleepwalkers, The Stand)."

Back in 2017, Garris himself explained why both he and King were so disappointed with Kubrick's film, as were other devout fans of the author.

"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,'" Garris shared with ComicBook.com.  "What it feels like was he was making an anti-horror movie, you know? When Dick Hallorann is killed, it's in a real wide shot that was far away from you, that pulls a lot of the jolt away. The scene in the bathtub and the like. You've got something like out of an Italian horror movie, with the decaying old, cackling woman coming out of the bathtub."

He continued, "It was like he was intentionally not using the tropes of building horror and suspense in a traditional way, that I think was a great experiment and worked really well on a Kubrick level. Kubrick's films are famously cold in a lot of ways. That's not a criticism, it's an observation. King's writing is very warm. It's very warm, and that book was so personal to King that I think he felt, and others felt, that the themes that were represented in his book were not at all represented in Kubrick's film. King had actually written a couple of drafts of the script for Kubrick, and Kubrick basically threw them out."

The Shining lands on Blu-ray on March 12th.

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