With the new IT movie bringing in over $700 million at the worldwide box office, Warner Bros. is wasting no time getting other Stephen King adaptations to the big screen, as they have now set Mike Flanagan to direct a film adaptation of Doctor Sleep, King's sequel to The Shining.
Deadline reports the Doctor Sleep news, revealing that in addition to directing, Flanagan will rewrite the pre-existing screenplay by Akiva Goldsman. There's no word yet if Flanagan's frequent writing partner Jeff Howard will be involved.
Someone else who is confirmed to be involved, though, is Flanagan's constant collaborator Trevor Macy, who 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.
Casting details, release date info, and the planned budget for the Doctor Sleep movie have yet to be revealed, but after IT made hundreds of millions of dollars on an approximate $35 million filming budget, Flanagan should have plenty of flexibility to tell Doctor Sleep on the big screen the way he intends to.
Flanagan is currently one of the most in-demand directors working in horror right now. He recently directed the well-received adaptation of King's 1992 novel Gerald's Game for Netflix, and he's now working on a series adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House for the streaming service.
Stay tuned to Daily Dead for more Doctor Sleep film news, and read on for 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."
Mike Flanagan: