‘Doctor Sleep’ Director Says Ewan McGregor Sequel To ‘The Shining’ is Closer to Kubrick Than We Think

Ewan McGregor will be visiting the Overlook Hotel in the upcoming "Doctor Sleep."

Yes, this is a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" is currently in the works and that McGregor will star as the adult version Danny Torrence. Torrence, if you remember, was the kid that kept uttering REDRUM and that had daddy chasing him all over the maze-like hotel with an ax (check out that on-the-nose Shining-esque poster below).

McGregor got the role over Chris Evans, Matt Smith, and Jeremy Renner.

The film is a Warner Bros.’ adaptation of Stephen King’s 2013 follow-up to The Shining and will have director Mike Flanagan ("Oculus," "Ouija: Origin of Evil," and "Gerald’s Game") helming the project. 

Flanagan is no stranger to King having adapted the author's novel "Gerald’s Game" for Netflix. The screenplay for "Doctor Sleep" had been originally written by Akiva Goldsman ("A Beautiful Mind"), but, according to Variety, Flanagan has rewritten most of it.

If Flanagan follows the novel's plot, then "Dr. Sleep" will pick up decades after the tragic events of "The Shining," with Torrence, now an alcoholic with anger issues, starting to sober up, and consequentially having his psychic powers returning. He decides to use his special abilities to help terminally ill patients in a hospice, where he inherits the nickname of Dr. Sleep. But it's his obsession with a particular patient, a little girl with special powers herself, that kicks off the plot.

Flanagan has mentioned that this is very true to Kubrick's original vision. “It is an adaptation of the novel ‘Doctor Sleep’, which is Stephen King’s sequel to his novel ‘The Shining,’” said Flanagan (via Bloody Disgusting). “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.”

The just released trailer features some of the iconic imagery from “The Shining,” such as blood-soaked elevators, a woman in a bathtub, and the twins at the end of the hallway. Could be terrible or absolutely brilliant.

Flanagan will always be fine in my books just for directing 2016's excellent creepfest "Hush."

Here’s the synopsis:

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” arrives in theaters on November 8.

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