Stephen King Not Writing ‘Shining’ Sequel

Published by Jeff Leins on: November 26th, 2009

At a reading of Stephen King’s new novel “Under the Dome” last week, the famous author answered questions from the audience and director David Cronenberg about his work.  The filmmaker asked if King enjoyed looking back over his novels and the horror writer responded that he sometimes wondered what his old characters were up to.

This lead to a lengthy scenario, reported by the Torontoist, that would center on Danny Torrance, the Big Wheel riding kid from The Shining.  “What happened after he survived the incident at the Overlook Hotel?”  King asked himself last summer.  In the author’s imagination, Danny would be 40 years old and living in upstate New York where he tends to patients in a hospice.  His mysterious powers help those pass on to the other side in a novel King wanted to title “Doctor Sleep.”  No return to the Overlook?  No thank you.

The original 1977 horror novel was adapted three years later by legendary director Stanley Kubrick (arguably the best horror movie ever made) and later expanded into a miniseries, but it looks like there won’t be a sequel.  At least not any time soon (you know Hollywood will try).  Dread Central has a different take from a person in attendance at the Q&A, who calls the earlier report “bullshit.”  Tell us how you really feel, syd13:

From the way he spoke, I got the impression that these were ideas he had come up with a few years back. But this was definitely just King indulging in a little bit of “what if” for the receptive audience. It was a nice moment, but he certainly didn’t imply that he was planning on actually writing the book.

The confusion is not the fault of the other outlets, who ran the shocking announcement with plenty of exasperated punctuation.  It’s sloppy journalism by the Torontoist, frankly.  Unfortunately, in this modern age of Internet news, it’s often difficult to determine which sites are reputable outlets and which are simply peddling rumors.  Trust me…

For example, online British publication The Sun regularly makes up celebrity stories for traffic, plucking eyeballs out of the digital cloud with cheesy headlines like “Twilight Taylor is teen tasty,” an erroneous article about how New Moon star Taylor Lautner might be gay.

But I digress.  King may have thought about what happened to Danny Torrance, but it doesn’t mean he’s writing a sequel, as intriguing as that possibility might be.  Who knows, maybe with all this free press King will take a crack at it.  He’s already considering another addition to the Dark Tower series.

Would you want a follow-up to The Shining?  What about a film sequel?