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Movies & TV

10th Nov 2018

Room star Jacob Tremblay joins cast of the sequel to The Shining

Dave Hanratty

Jacob Tremblay Doctor Sleep Stephen King The Shining

This one could go either way, but the cast is solid so far…

Right, we’ll get to the story behind the headline in a moment, but first things first.

Do we need a sequel to The Shining?

Yes, it’s based on a follow-up book penned by none other than Stephen King himself, but is it truly all that necessary?

It’s well known that King was hugely unhappy with Stanley Kubrick’s take on The Shining, despite the end result being a true horror masterwork.

He once told Rolling Stone:

“The book is hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fire, and the movie in ice. In the book, there’s an actual arc where you see this guy, Jack Torrance, trying to be good, and little by little he moves over to this place where he’s crazy.

“And as far as I was concerned, when I saw the movie, Jack was crazy from the first scene. I had to keep my mouth shut at the time. It was a screening, and Nicholson was there. But I’m thinking to myself the minute he’s on the screen, ‘Oh, I know this guy. I’ve seen him in five motorcycle movies, where Jack Nicholson played the same part.’

“And it’s so misogynistic. I mean, Wendy Torrance is just presented as this sort of screaming dishrag. But that’s just me, that’s the way I am.”

Indeed, King disapproved so much so that he endorsed a three-part TV mini-series remake that aired in 1997.

Perhaps feeling that he had unfinished business in and beyond the Overlook Hotel, King penned Doctor Sleep, releasing the official sequel in 2013.

As it often happens with the author’s work, movie rights were quickly snapped up and Doctor Sleep will hit cinemas in 2020.

Mike Flanagan, fresh from heading up The Haunting of Hill House, is attached to write and direct, with Ewan McGregor in the lead role of the now-adult Danny Torrance.

Torrance has essentially inherited his father’s alcoholism as he runs afoul of a cult led by Mission: Impossible star Rebecca Ferguson.

That’s some pretty decent pedigree for one of those movies that you honestly feel will go either way.

And now comes the news – see, we got there in the end – that Room star Jacob Tremblay has been added to the mix.

TMZ reports that Tremblay, who recently appeared onscreen in the rather messy Predator reboot/sequel/whatever, will receive a cool $100,000 for his role.

Said role is currently unknown, but you can probably either mark him down as a young version of Danny in flashbacks or one of the children endangered by the cult.

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