The fact that Stephen King disliked Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining, is film trivia as old as the ghosts who walk the corridors of the Overlook Hotel. Now, with the release of the next chapter in The Shining story, Doctor Sleep, rolling out in cinemas across the globe, the legendary horror writer has claimed that director Mike Flanagan has done such a good job of bleeding his 2013 novel with the cinematic vision created by the late auteur in 1980, that there may be a case for redemption.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, King says “I read the script to this one very, very carefully, because obviously I wanted to do a good job with the sequel, because people knew the book The Shining, and I thought, I don’t want to screw this up. Mike Flanagan, I’ve enjoyed all his movies, and I’ve worked with him before on Gerald’s Game. So, I read the script very, very carefully and I said to myself, ‘Everything that I ever disliked about the Kubrick version of The Shining is redeemed for me here.”
He continued to heap praise on Doctor Sleep (and we were in agreement with King, awarding the film ★★★★ in our review, which you can read here), adding “I don’t want to get into a big argument about how great The Shining film is that Kubrick did or my feelings about it. All I can say is, Mike took my material, he created a terrific story, people who have seen this movie flip for it, and I flipped for it, too. Because he managed to take my novel of Doctor Sleep, the sequel, and somehow weld it seamlessly to the Kubrick version of The Shining, the movie. So, yeah, I liked it a lot.”
Did you have a similar reaction to King? Or perhaps the opposite? Did Doctor Sleep tarnish the legacy of what Kubrick had created so memorably first time around? Let us know using the comments section below, or head over to our Twitter page to continue the discussion…
Doctor Sleep features a cast that includes Ewan McGregor, Kyliegh Curran, Carl Lumbly, Zahn McClarnon, Emily Alyn Lind, Bruce Greenwood, Jocelin Donahue, Alex Essoe and Cliff Curtis.
