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A fractured legacy, restored
How Mike Flanagan redeemed Stephen King's most hated Stephen King movie
Stephen King has never been shy about how much he hated director Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his 1977 novel, The Shining. Although it's easily one of the best horror films of all time, Kubrick’s vision of Jack Torrance and the Overlook Hotel really rubbed King the wrong way.
As revealed in the book Fright Favorites: 31 Movies to Haunt Your Halloween and Beyond, King disagreed with Kubrick’s decision to cast Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, preferring actors like Martin Sheen, who seemed more approachable than Nicholson, whose filmography tended toward intense, unstable roles. King also criticized the changes to Wendy Torrance, played by Shelley Duvall. He called Kubrick’s adaptation of Wendy "one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film,” a striking comment given the accusations of misogyny King has faced over the content in his novels.
However, King’s feelings about Kubrick’s adaptation have shifted — and Mike Flanagan is the reason why. The iconic horror writer and director is best known for his award-winning Netflix horror originals, such as Midnight Mass. But his adaptation of The Shining’s ambitious sequel, Doctor Sleep, now available on Paramount Plus, ultimately changed King’s view of Kubrick’s adaptation for the better.
Mike Flanagan brought Kubrick and King’s vision together
With a story as beloved as The Shining, a sequel was always going to face formidable obstacles. Would it appeal to the original’s fans? Would it be strong enough to stand on its own, or would it feel like a nostalgic cash-grab? King reassured all those fears and questions with his 2013 novel, Doctor Sleep. The novel was well praised, with Publishers Weekly calling it a “gripping, taut read that provides a satisfying conclusion to Danny Torrance's story.”
Both the novel and the 2019 adaptation of Doctor Sleep follow an adult Danny Torrance, whose time at the Overlook Hotel — including his father's violent abuse and death — still haunts him. Working as an orderly in a hospice, Danny uses his psychic abilities to comfort dying patients and, during one shift, mentally bonds with a young girl named Abra. Neither of them knows that a vampire cult called The True Knot is hunting Abra to feed on her Shine — the psychic abilities she and other children like her possess.
Yet while Flanagan had plenty to work with thanks to King’s novel, he told the creator from the start that he would also draw direct inspiration from Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining for what he was creating in Doctor Sleep. Combining Kubrick’s visual masterpiece with King's original vision wouldn’t be easy, but Flanagan was willing to fight to get it right.
"I said, 'Look, I'm a King fanatic, I have been since I'm a kid, you are my hero, but when I read Doctor Sleep, all the images in my head were Kubrick's images,'" Flanagan shared with Entertainment Weekly, referring to a conversation he had with King during the early beginnings of the film adaptation of Doctor Sleep. “There's no other language to tell that story in. If you say 'Overlook Hotel,' I see something. It lives right up in my brain because of Stanley Kubrick. You can't pretend that isn't the case.”
As expected, King was initially reluctant. It’s easy to see why: He once described Kubrick’s film as “a Cadillac with no engine in it” — something that looked fantastic but served no real purpose. Flanagan, however, believed he could combine the best of Kubrick’s film and the novel to create something King would approve of. He pitched the creator a scene near the film’s end, with Danny inside the Overlook Hotel. This was a clear departure from the original: In the book, the hotel lies in ruins, making King’s approval of the change all the more shocking.
With so much of Kubrick’s adaptation inspiring Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, it’s no surprise that some changes were made to align with the film. Even so, these changes were fairly minimal, and Flanagan strove to stay as faithful as possible.
The result was an ambitious sequel that, while it turned out to be a real snoozefest at the box office, critics praised it highly. Yet Doctor Sleep's real victory was that it finally let King appreciate his most-hated film.
“Mike took my material, he created a terrific story, people who have seen this movie flip for it, and I flipped for it, too,” King told Entertainment Weekly. “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.”
It took 39 years, but seeing The Shining redeemed in the eyes of its original creator makes for an oh-so-sweet story.
Doctor Sleep is available to stream now on Paramount Plus.