Decades after his harrowing time at the Overlook Hotel, Danny Torrance uses the Shine in a different way in Doctor Sleep, Stephen King's sequel novel that will come to life on the big screen in a new adaptation from filmmaker Mike Flanagan. With the new movie recently slated for a 2020 release from Warner Bros., the first casting news for the film has now surfaced.
Variety reports that Ewan McGregor will play an adult version of Danny Torrance in the Doctor Sleep movie. According to Variety, Stephen King himself approves of the casting.
The Doctor Sleep movie is slated for a January 24th, 2020 from Warner Bros. Flanagan will direct from a screenplay he worked on that was originally written by Akiva Goldsman, which is in turn based on King's 2013 novel.
Flanagan's frequent collaborator Trevor Macy will produce the Doctor Sleep movie alongside Vertigo Entertainment's Jon Berg, with Goldsman also on board as an executive producer.
For those unfamiliar, Doctor Sleep takes place years after the harrowing events at the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. The sequel follows an adult Danny Torrance, who puts his psychological "shining" abilities to benevolent use at a hospice in the tiny town of Frazier, New Hampshire. A recovering alcoholic, Danny's newfound stability is put into jeopardy when a malevolent, shine-enhanced group known as the True Knot rolls into town.
Flanagan is one of the most in-demand directors working in horror right now, and he's no stranger to Stephen King stories, having recently directed the well-received adaptation of King's 1992 novel Gerald's Game for Netflix (he's also working on a series adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House for the streaming service).
We'll be sure to keep Daily Dead readers updated as more information is revealed, and for those unfamiliar, we have the book's official synopsis and cover art (via StephenKing.com):
"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."
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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