Mike Flanagan, the director of the Stephen King adaptation of Doctor Sleep, has revealed the change that the author requested he make.
Stephen King adaptations show no sign of slowing down and Mike Flanagan has been involved in one of the most recent efforts to hit screens, Doctor Sleep.
Flanagan showed the film to the legendary horror author before it was finalised and it turns out King had a problem with a scene for being too brutal. That might sound crazy coming from Stephen King but this is what Flanagan had to say on The Kingcast show.
Describing how he played the film for King at the author’s home, he said: “It’s a long movie, and it ran about three times as long for me I think as anyone else who’s ever watched it. Every single thing he did in the seat next to me I was like ‘He hates it, he hates it, oh god he hates it.’”
Apparently it was the scene where Jacob Tremblay dies that troubled King: “It was one of the only times he leaned over to me during the movie was when Tremblay got killed. He leaned over and he was like ‘That’s a little brutal isn’t it?’ I was like ‘Shit I gotta go back, I gotta go back and edit this. I gotta pull stuff out.’ And we did, we changed it. We backed off….He said to me after as we talked about that, that was his only note for the movie really was, ‘That one’s gonna hurt…You need that, you’re right, but I would have a hard time showing this to my wife so you should think about pulling it back.’ And he was right.”
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It does sound surprising that King – known for his gruesome and disturbing horror novels – would have a problem like this but as we don’t know what the scene was like before, perhaps it was indeed a little much!
Still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook, Dan Torrance has fought to find some semblance of peace. But that peace is shattered when he encounters Abra, a courageous teenager with her own powerful extrasensory gift, known as the “shine.” Instinctively recognizing that Dan shares her power, Abra has sought him out, desperate for his help against the merciless Rose the Hat and her followers, The True Knot, who feed off the shine of innocents in their quest for immortality.
Forming an unlikely alliance, Dan and Abra engage in a brutal life-or-death battle with Rose. Abra’s innocence and fearless embrace of her shine compel Dan to call upon his own powers as never before—at once facing his fears and reawakening the ghosts of the past.
Doctor Sleep features a cast that includes Ewan McGregor, Kyliegh Curran, Carl Lumbly, Zahn McClarnon, Emily Alyn Lind, Bruce Greenwood, Jocelin Donahue, Alex Essoe, Henry Thomas and Cliff Curtis.
