Is there anyone out there craving a prequel to Stanley Kubrick’s amazing film The Shining? Yeah, I didn’t think so, but apparently Warner Bros. feels differently.
A source at Warner Bros. (who’s not authorized to talk about it publicly, so they leaked it) told LA Times that the studio has tapped writer-producer Laeta Kalogridis and her partners Bradley Fischer and James Vanderbilt to develop a prequel to the film. The LA Times article states that “A WB spokeswoman cautioned that any “Shining” prequel was in a very early stage and not even formally in development”.
The prequel would focus on events prior to Jack Torrance (played brilliantly by Jack Nicholson in the original), his wife and little Danny’s fateful stay at the Overlook Hotel. What that could be is anyone’s guess, but do we even need/want the prequel? Kubrick’s film is a cult classic and is engrained in our minds. Could any follow-up to The Shining, be it a prequel or sequel, even live up to the original? Hollywood’s track record seems to prove that prequels and sequels to such cult classics rarely, if ever, live up to their predecessors. Take the recent prequel/reboot/remake of The Thing as a prime example of this.
This prequel isn’t the only continuation that’s currently in the works. Stephen King is working on a sequel to his novel The Shining, on which the movie was based, titled Doctor Sleep. Here’s the synopsis for the novel:
Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever,The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special twelve-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.
Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”
Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.
Well get ready folks because it looks like a follow-up of some kind is coming our way and it’s coming soon. But just remember, all work and no play make something something… eh I forgot. Oh well!