In September 2013, Stephen King released his novel Doctor Sleep. And for those who don’t know it, it works as a sequel from The Shining, published in 1977 which was one of his most acclaimed works, in part thanks to that fantastic movie adaptation Stanley Kubrick made, The Shining (1980).
Now it’s been announced that the sequel book will also have a movie adaptation. The designated director for this adaptation is Mike Flanagan, a filmmaker that slowly is becoming one interesting name in the genres of horror and mystery, especially thanks to his movies Oculus (2013) and Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016). This is not the first time Mike Flanagan is adapting a Stephen King novel. His most recent work to date is the Netflix Original Gerald’s Game (2017), also based in one of the superstar author’s novels.
The plot of Doctor Sleep goes around Danny Torrance as a middle-aged man drifting through America in order to shed his father’s alcoholism, which passed down to him in order to forget the events of “The Shining“. After landing into a small Massachusetts town and with the aid of a cat becomes “Doctor Sleep“. After meeting a young girl with the most powerful shining Danny‘s ever seen, he must now face the demons of his past and the demons of the present in order to save her from a horrifying evil known as “The True Knot“.
Although John Cusack has expressed interest in playing adult Danny Torrence, nothing is known about who is cast in this film. The screenplay is also written by director Mike Flanagan together with Akiva Goldsman, known for the scripts of other popular adaptation films like Batman Forever (1995), Lost in Space (1998), I, Robot (2004), The Da Vinci Code (2006), I Am Legend (2007), Insurgent (2015) or the most recent Stephen King based The Dark Tower (2017). Stephen King also takes the position of executive producer in the Doctor Sleep adaptation. Warner Bros. is in production. Filming dates and locations are not made public yet.
