Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:įollow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.īuy our Film Stories and Film Junior print magazines here.The report indicates that the Doctor Sleep movie already has a director, with Oculus and Hush filmmaker Mike Flanagan attached to helm the adaptation. The director has more Netflix horror on the way in the form of The Midnight Club and then will tackle Gothic horror literary maestro with The Fall Of The House Of Usher, so whilst Flanagan may have regrets, fans of his work certainly haven’t missed out too much. They control the rights, so that was that.”Īs it stands, the mini-renaissance of Stephen King adaptations appears to be over with several projects such as The Running Man, Salem’s Lot and Christine all in various states of limbo, with only a very ordinary adaptation of Firestarter making it to cinema screens so far this year.ĭespite not getting his prequel to The Shining made, Flanagan remains one of the top filmmakers working in the horror genre today, with Netflix shows The Haunting Of Hill House, The Haunting Of Bly Manor, and most recently, the brilliant (and very Stephen King-like) Midnight Mass wowing audiences. I’ll always regret this didn’t happen.” He later added: “Because of DOCTOR SLEEP’s box office performance, Warner Bros opted not to proceed with it. The film earned $72 million against a reported production budget between $45 million and $55 million and as such, the studio dropped plans for a prequel movie.įlanagan has opened up about the aborted project, tweeting in response to a fan question, saying: “We were SO CLOSE.

The planned prequel would have followed Hallorann’s telepathic chef, presumably charting his path to The Overlook Hotel.ĭoctor Sleep was a solid film that just didn’t set the box office alight in the midst of a few other Stephen King adaptations doing well, such as 2017’s It.

Mike Flanagan, director of 2019’s Doctor Sleep, has confirmed that Warner Bros quietly shelved plans for a prequel movie following the tepid box office response to the legacy sequel to 1980s The Shining. Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson headlined the sequel, which followed the original film’s young Danny Torrance, still blessed (or cursed) with the gift of ‘the Shine’, now as an adult.Ĭarl Lumbly played Dick Hallorann in the sequel, a role played by Scatman Crothers in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film.

Doctor sleep sequel to the shining