King mulling SHINING sequel

When Stanley Kubrick adapted a novel into a film he rarely pleased the book's author. In the case of Stephen King’s The Shining, he didn't even try. Before he even started production on the film, Kubrick described the book as "hardly a serious literary work." Such nastiness certainly didn't endear him to King, who responded in kind after the film's release by calling it "a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little."

Given all that, it's obviously a source of some annoyance to King that The Shining is generally considered the best adaptation of a King horror story by far. King has slagged the film at every opportunity, and back in 1997 he even wrote a Shining remake TV movie for ABC, removing all the stuff Kubrick put in and putting in all the stuff from the book that Kubrick cut. The result was a mess that just made Kubrick look like even better. King's version of the story was trashy and obvious, with shoddy characterization, hokey special effects and b-movie scares. (Stephen Webber gave good crazy as Jack Torrance, but the poor guy was stomping around the Overlook Hotel in Jack Nicholson's footsteps, and his performance inevitably suffered in comparison.)

So I must admit that hearing the news that King is now seriously considering writing a Shining sequel novel doesn't thrill me to the marrow. Apparently he's already got a title - Doctor Sleep - and he's mapped out the plot:

In King’s still tentative plan for the novel, Danny is now 40 years old and living in upstate New York, where he works as the equivalent of an orderly at a hospice for the terminally ill. Danny’s real job is to visit with patients who are just about to pass on to the other side, and to help them make that journey with the aid of his mysterious powers. Danny also has a sideline in betting on the horses, a trick he learned from his buddy Dick Hallorann.

King went on to say that he hasn't absolutely made up his mind to write the book, joking, "Maybe if I keep talking about it I won’t have to write it."

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