Mike Flanagan, the director who successfully turned Stephen King’s “unfilmable” novel GERALD’S GAME into a terrific movie, will encore with a film version of the author’s DOCTOR SLEEP, the sequel to THE SHINING.
Deadline reports that Flanagan, whose credits also include OCULUS, HUSH, BEFORE I WAKE and OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL, will helm DOCTOR SLEEP for Warner Bros., which released Stanley Kubrick’s classic SHINING film in 1980. Flanagan will also rewrite a previous SLEEP script by Akiva Goldsman (who also co-wrote THE DARK TOWER, so good news there), and his longtime collaborator Trevor Macy will produce, along with Vertigo Entertainment’s Jon Berg. DOCTOR SLEEP picks up with Danny Torrance, the child from THE SHINING now grown up into a troubled adult who is being haunted by ghosts from the Overlook Hotel. He has been quelling both his lingering anger and his psychic abilities with alcohol, but he decides to quit the booze and use his abilities to comfort dying patients at a hospice. He becomes telepathically connected to a similarly gifted young girl, and attempts to help her evade a malevolent group called the True Knot, who have psychic powers of their own. Flanagan and Macy are currently working on a new adaptation of THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE for Netflix.
