After 28 Years, a Forgotten Stephen King Remake Is Streaming for the First Time Ever

With decades of horror novels that have become horror movies and TV shows, it’s understandable if constant readers haven’t been able to find their way to every Stephen King adaptation. The good and bad news of this is that new adaptations are made every year, in just a few weeks, we’ll be getting an expansion of the IT franchise with the HBO TV series IT: Welcome to Derry. Even as new versions of his stories are made and released, others that may have been forgotten about or lost to time have found a way back into the world.

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We’re talking about a very specific example here, as a shocking Stephen King adaptation has actually made its way onto streaming for the first time ever. The 1997 miniseries remake of The Shining, written by King himself and directed by Mick Garris, has made its way online, having never appeared on any major streaming service before. For the King faithful, the good news is that all three episodes of the remake are now streaming on Hulu in time for Halloween, but is this trip to the Overlook one worth checking into?

What Are the Differences Between The Shining Miniseries and the Movie?

As noted, The Shining TV miniseries was actually written by Stephen King himself, adapting his own novel into a three-part production that clocks in at four and a half hours in length. Naturally, this means there’s a lot of additional material found in the miniseries that Stanley Kubrick’s movie had to remove for the sake of adaptation, meaning it sticks quite a bit closer to the original novel itself.

Among the many things found in the miniseries that the movie itself removed include the haunted topiaries that stalk the grounds of the Overlook Hotel, Jack Torrance’s weapon of choice in the finale being a croquet mallet (instead of an axe), and the haunted Room 237 has once again become Room 217, as it was in the text. Film fans will also notice that there are no creepy Grady sisters in the miniseries, nor any of those iconic carpet patterns.

Another key difference in the miniseries and the movie is the fate of Dick Halloran, the head cook for the Overlook. The version played by Scatman Crothers in the Kubrick movie is killed by Jack Torrance in one of the film’s only real instances of violence, while the miniseries version played by Melvin Van Peebles survives (like in the original book).

The biggest real difference in the two is the length. Kubrick’s movie clocks in at two hours and 26 minutes, with the miniseries having an additional two hours of material. As a result, this largely addresses one of the biggest complaints about the Kubrick movie, as the miniseries does a decent job of capturing Jack Torrance’s slow descent into madness. In the miniseries, Steven Weber’s take on the character shows his madness as a gradual process that gets deeper over the three episodes, not something that appears to happen somewhat overnight, as in the movie.

Another character that is given a robust expansion in the miniseries over the film is Danny Torrance himself. In the miniseries, Danny (Courtland Mead) hardly keeps his “Shining” powers a secret, talking about them openly with his mother and all the things he’s found and learned. The miniseries does make the tragic mistake of taking a piece of subtext from the book (the identity of Danny’s mysterious imaginary friend “Tony”) and decides to make it plain text. Wendy Torrance (Rebecca De Mornay in the miniseries) is also given a much different personality in the film, frequently standing up for herself and trying to maintain a consistent relationship with her husband despite the pressures of their situation.

Finally, The Shining miniseries also delivers a brand new conclusion, one that’s even more different from the novel. Given that we know King would eventually write a sequel novel to The Shining, 2013’s Doctor Sleep, the conclusion that offers a bit of sequel bait is an interesting object for fans to parse now.

Is Stephen King’s The Shining Miniseries Worth Watching?

Longtime fans of Stephen King’s work and even Kubrick’s movie may find the 1997 miniseries to be something of an interesting object. After the feature film has maintained its place in the horror canon for so long, it does offer a much different perspective on the narrative and characters from what has become, for lack of a better term, what most fans think about.

That said, there’s a lot about The Shining miniseries that doesn’t hold up very well. Much of the visual effects and scares are terribly dated and remove a lot of the tension from what might otherwise be a good moment.

In the end, longtime fans of Stephen King’s work and those with an extreme affinity for Kubrick’s movie should at least attempt to watch The Shining miniseries. It’s not a particularly “great” horror experience, but it’s a different one, and expands on the novel in places where the movie simply cannot. Horror fans without those longstanding feelings may find this one boring, and quite time-consuming, with little payoff.