Director Mike Flanagan is going to great lengths to channel Stanley Kubrick in his upcoming sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep. Although the source material for the film is primarily Stephen King’s follow-up to one of his most prominent classics by the same name, the Haunting of Hill House creator is determined to make sure his film adaptation is closely tied to the popular 1980 film as well. In a recent set visit, it was revealed that Flanagan has spent days ensuring that the rebuilt Overlook Hotel for the 2019 movie looks exactly the same as the one Jack Nicholson terrorized his family in on the big screen.
From the Colorado Lounge where Nicholson’s iconic obsession with typing “All Work and No Play” first graced the screens, to the haunting hallway where Danny saw the twins all the way to the disturbing Room 237, Flanagan is striving for exact replicas. He reportedly used “the exact blueprints from Stanley Kubrick’s film, which were in storage at Warner Bros,” to rebuild the sets that carried so much of the original film’s ominous tone.
Each set is filled with every prop that Flanagan was able to recreate after “countless hours spent analyzing every frame of the movie to track down every book on every shelf and every framed photograph on every wall.” If he wasn’t able to find or identify the prop, that created something that would appear identical to the viewers.
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Unlike the commonly detached sets that are easily maneuverable and separated, Stanley Kubrick had insisted on a “massive and mostly uninterrupted” area for the Colorado Lounge. The first floor has stairs that lead to the second floor with balconies and hallways, allowing for the beautiful tracking shots that built so much of the tension in the original film. Flanagan has given himself the same freedom with the rebuilt set.
The only major changes that have befallen the sets have a narrative purpose. The series of hallways that Danny traveled on his recognizable big-wheel are detached and in another soundstage. They are easily identifiable as the place that haunted our dreams with the twin ghosts, but the set has been aged, hinting at an abandoned Overlook.
During an interview with Flanagan, producer Trevor Macy and star Ewan McGregor, it was revealed that the climax in the third act will take place in the Overlook Hotel. Perhaps it will be similar to the events of Flanagan’s popular Haunting of Hill House. This is also, however, reminiscent of The Shining in that it is a major departure from the source material. Kubrick was known for taking liberties with the novel, and seeing as The Overlook is no longer standing in the novel Doctor Sleep, book readers can expect some surprises as well.
Doctor Sleep follows an adult Danny as he struggles with the trauma he suffered as a small child at the Overlook depicted in The Shining. He’s a recovering alcoholic, he has a difficult relationship with his past and he has psychic abilities that he is trying to forget.
The film will simultaneously act as an adaptation of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep as well as a sequel to Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining. The film hits theaters on November 8. This news comes to us thanks to a set visit by Slash Film.
