Warner Bros. Set Wheels In Motion For A Prequel To The Shining, As Stephen King Readies His Own Sequel

While Stephen King will soon release Dr. Sleep, his sequel to The Shining, Warner Bros. have started, very quietly, on early work that could lead to a prequel for their film version.

The project has a long way to go to the screen, but Warner Bros. have called in Laeta Kalogridis, Bradley Fischer and James Vanderbilt to produce the new film. Kalogridis worked with James Cameron on the script for Avatar, wrote his Battle Angel script, and also penned Scorsese's Shutter Island; Vanderbilt drafted Zodiac and the original pass at The Amazing Spider-Man.

The LA Times tried to get an official statement from WB, but one was (predictably) not forthcoming.

It's possible, then, that we'll have duelling Shining spin-offs in a couple-few years. A prequel to Kubrick's movie on one hand, and likely without the support of King; and an adaptation of his Dr. Sleep set up elsewhere.

Here's the blurb for Dr. Sleep, then a video of King reading from the unpublished book.

Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special twelve-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.

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.