Stephen King Ponders 'Shining' Sequel

Thursday

26Nov2009

Stephen King Ponders 'Shining' Sequel

Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 12:15PM

I haven't read a new Stephen King work in quite a while, so I'm in no position to say whether or not he's still got the mettle to carry something like this through, but the celebrated author told an audience in Toronto recently that he has thought about penning a sequel to The Shining, which King calls Doctor Sleep.

The Torontoist reports that King feels "the first novel never explained what happened to young Danny and his psychic powers" and that "he believes that the events that took place at the Overlook Hotel must have left Danny with lots of emotional scars."

Yes, well, I think that goes without saying.

But King stopped short of saying he was writing a sequel, instead talking about scenarios he has imagined over the years. However, if it does happen, it's not an immediate follow-up to the original, turned into one of the great psychological films of all time by Stanley Kubrick (with a big assist from Jack Nicholson), but rather a contemporary story that happens upon Danny at age 40. He works as an orderly at a hospice, which is kind of a cover for his real mission there, assisting the terminally ill to the other side with his powers.

Again, I don't have a really strong gauge for whether or not King should even make the effort at this stage, and from the perspective of a film, it would have to be one hell of a book to match Kubrick's masterpiece on any level, much less every level. But that's putting the cart before the horse, I suspect.

Colin Boyd |

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