How Mike Flanagan redeemed Stephen King’s most hated Stephen King movie
A return to the Overlook Hotel helped Mike Flanagan change Stephen King’s mind about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Flanagan proposed bringing the adult Danny Torrance back inside the hotel near the end of Doctor Sleep, his adaptation of King’s sequel. Winning King’s approval meant bridging decades of creative disagreement.
Polygon counts Kubrick’s adaptation of King’s 1977 novel among the greatest horror films, but King objected to both the casting and the way his characters reached the screen.
Fright Favorites: 31 Movies to Haunt Your Halloween and Beyond recounts King’s opposition to Jack Nicholson playing Jack Torrance. He favored actors such as Martin Sheen, whose more approachable presence contrasted with Nicholson’s history of playing intense, unstable characters.
Wendy Torrance, played by Shelley Duvall, drew an even sharper response. King called Kubrick’s version “one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film.” As Polygon points out, that criticism carries a tension: King has faced accusations of misogyny over his own novels.
King summed up his broader objection by calling the movie “a Cadillac with no engine in it”: it looked fantastic, but he felt it served no real purpose. Flanagan, known for award-winning Netflix horror originals including Midnight Mass, eventually helped him find something to appreciate in it.
Mike Flanagan brought Kubrick and King’s vision together
Polygon says King’s 2013 novel, Doctor Sleep, managed to satisfy readers of The Shining without leaning on nostalgia, and to work as a story in its own right. Publishers Weekly called it a “gripping, taut read that provides a satisfying conclusion to Danny Torrance’s story.”
In both the book and the 2019 movie, Danny has grown up without escaping the trauma of the Overlook, his father’s violent abuse, or his father’s death. He works as a hospice orderly, using his psychic abilities to ease patients’ final moments. During a shift, he forms a mental bond with Abra, a young girl.
Neither initially realizes that Abra is the target of The True Knot. The vampire cult feeds on Shine, the psychic ability Abra and other children like her possess.
Flanagan told King early on that he would draw directly from Kubrick’s version of The Shining, letting its visual language sit alongside King’s original vision.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan recalled telling King: “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,’”
“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.”
King was reluctant at first. Flanagan nevertheless thought he could unite the strengths of the film and the novel, and the late scene he pitched became the key. Danny’s presence inside the Overlook was a substantial departure from the book, where the hotel is in ruins. King approved it despite that difference.
The adaptation also needed other changes to fit the continuity of Kubrick’s movie. Those adjustments were fairly minimal, Polygon argues, and Flanagan worked to preserve as much of King’s story as possible.
Critics responded warmly to the ambitious sequel, though its box office performance disappointed. Polygon argues the sequel’s real win was that King came to appreciate the adaptation he had disliked for so long.
“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.”
King’s reassessment arrived 39 years after Kubrick’s film. Doctor Sleep is now available on Paramount Plus.
