In making the Doctor Sleep he wanted, director Mike Flanagan walked an immensely difficult tightrope. Rather than making a straight adaptation of Stephen King‘s The Shining sequel like the author hoped, he opted instead to change a few things both to give it his own spin and to link up the story with Stanley Kubrick‘s 1980 classic adaptation. In a larger post on Tumblr, Flanagan explained why he wanted these stories to come together and why, specifically, he had to take everything back to the Overlook hotel Kubrick built in his version.
Doctor Sleep follows an older Danny Torrance who turned to drinking after years of trauma and hauntings from the Overlook only to finally escape the cycle, sober up, and become a hospice worker. He once again has to confront the supernatural, however, when a young girl named Abra Stone with a shining greater than his own reaches out to him and informs him of the threat posed by the True Knot, a cult that feeds on the shine. Thanks to the ending of King’s The Shining, however, one thing Doctor Sleep originally lacked was The Overlook hotel itself. Flanagan recalled speaking with Jon Berg at Warner Bros. about the script they had for the film from Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind writer Akiva Goldsman. He didn’t fully agree with the direction Goldsman had planned and instead wanted a more faithful, if streamlined, adaptation of the book with the exception that the Overlook is still standing. Specifically, he wanted Kubrick’s Overlook because of how much it stuck out to him.
The director recalled the conversation he had with Berg about his ideas:
“I think you have to bring back the hotel. Kubrick’s hotel, I mean.” Jon smiled wider. “Yeah, it’s a bummer the hotel burned down. King goes out of his way at the start of the book to emphasize that – no Overlook, look no further.” This was my biggest gripe with the book. I said “When I read the book, all I could see was Kubrick’s hotel. I think you do the book as close as you possibly can, until the big fight at the end. Instead of it taking place in an empty field, let it be in the hotel.”
Flanagan Wanted to Reconcile Kubrick and King’s Visions With the Ending
With the Overlook restored, Flanagan decided to make another crucial change with ending that unite both King and Kubrick. Kubrick’s ending was the complete antithesis to King’s with Jack Torrance freezing to death in the hedge maze instead of dying with the hotel in a massive explosion after leaving the boilers unchecked. He never completed his sacrifice to save Danny, Wendy, and Dick Halloran, cementing Kubrick’s version of Jack as more of a villain rather than a sympathetic character in King’s eyes. Flanagan wanted to bring back King’s The Shining ending as a way to fit both stories – letting Dan break the cycle his father fell into in Kubrick’s version while still hitting the same themes King expressed in Doctor Sleep. He brought up the change to Berg at their meeting:
Jon: “Do you think King will be upset if you change his ending? You know how feels about The Shining, right?”
Me: “What if we gave him THAT ending? What if we let Danny have Jack’s ending? Jack sacrificed himself to save his family and destroy the Overlook – why not let Danny do that? Change the ending, sure, but give him the ending Kubrick denied him.”
The one thing Flanagan was always aware of, and a little afraid of, was the reaction the changes would get from both sides. In the end, he managed to satisfy many viewers while still fulfilling his own vision, but at the time, the pressure of Kubrick and King weighed heavy on his shoulders:
Writing the script was tough. I immediately felt like I had stepped into a very unsafe space. “This is going to piss everybody off,” I figured. Kubrick fans would be livid that the movie was being made. King fans might be angry that Kubrick’s imagery was being homaged. There was no way to please everyone, so I set about writing the movie I wanted to see most.
Doctor Sleep can currently be streamed on HBO Max. Check out the trailer below.
