Inspiration for the Work: Stephen King first got the idea in 1998 at a book signing when somebody asked him what happened to Danny. This was a question King had often asked himself as well as what would have happened to Jack Torrance had he found AA. King started thinking about how old Danny was and where Wendy was now, and decided to find the answers with a sequel, but it was a tall order.
Sequel Gap: Released in 2013, 36 years after its 1977 predecessor. The book self-references this, making oblique references to every American president from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, and incorporating technological advances (cell phones, GPS, iPads, and so on).
Throw It In!: According to King, he never originally intended for Abra's name to stem from "abracadabra," and it was just a "happy accident."
Write What You Know: In the time since writing The Shining, King had struggled considerably with alcoholism and substance abuse, which explains his notably harsher stance on the topic than in the original book.
The Film
Ability over Appearance: Kyliegh Curran as Abra Stone looks almost nothing like her book counterpart, with Abra being a blonde-haired blue-eyed white girl in the novel and Kyleigh Curran being African-American with black hair and brown eyes. Curran was still chosen for the part based on the incredible strength of her performance.
Acclaimed Flop: The film earned solid reviews across the board from criticsnote Although it has a 59 on Metacritic which means "mixed or average reviews" and audiences (with a 78% on Rotten Tomatoes to boot), with quite a few saying that it captured the essence of King's work better than most. However, box office figures were unfortunately not reflective of the praise. See Box Office Bomb for those details.
Abra's love of RWBY in the movie, from the memorabilia in her room to her taking on a hairstyle similar to recurring villain Emerald Sustrai in her mental projection, is thanks to her actress Kyleigh Curran, who is a big fan of the series in real life.
Similarly, Rebecca Ferguson came up with the idea for the various trinkets that Rose the Hat would wear, envisioning them as "hunting trophies that she would love to wear Hidden in Plain Sight."
Approval of God: Writer/Director Mike Flanagan worked closely with Stephen King and the Kubrick estate to ensure the movie was a pleasing adaptation of the book and a satisfactory sequel to the film. By most accounts, all parties involved are happy, with King even saying the film made him ease up somewhat from his notorious dislike of the Kubrick film (as an adaptation. He said it is a good horror movie in itself, but rather sees it as a work that is inspired by the novel rather than an adaptation), saying "Everything that I ever disliked about the Kubrick version of The Shining is redeemed for me here."
Awesome, Dear Boy: Rebecca Ferguson is not a fan of the horror genre, but is such a massive fan of Stephen King's work that she instantly signed on to star in the film as soon as it was announced.
Box Office Bomb: Budget, $47 million. Gross, $31,581,712 (domestic), $72,281,712 (worldwide). The cause is believed to be a combination of the film being released after Halloween, the unfamiliarity of younger moviegoers with the source material (the older Stephen King novels and The Shining film, which came out in 1980), and the film's mediocre marketing campaign that seemed to have focused more at imagery from the preceding film rather than the film's own imagery.
California Doubling: The film was almost entirely shot in Georgia, and is set in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, and Maine.
Dawson Casting: Heavily downplayed; the 17-year-old Emily Alyn Lind plays the 15-year-old Snakebite Andi.
Dyeing for Your Art: Henry Thomas had to shave his head and wear a wig to convincingly match the hairline of Jack Torrance from The Shining.
Fake Nationality: Swedish Rebecca Ferguson plays Rose the Hat, who sports an Irish accent and is implied to be Romani by birth.
Flip-Flop of God: Crow Daddy's backstory in the film adaptation is incredibly confusing and contradictory. If taking the film as an adaptation of the original novel, then Crow was formerly a Harvard-graduated lawyer who joined the True Knot in The '30s. However, the film version of him is a Composite Character of Crow Daddy and Barry the Chink (taking on the latter's job as the True Knot's tracker), with his old pistol holster implying that he used to be a native tracker working for the Union Army during the American Civil War. And to further muddy the waters, according to Zahn McClarnon himself, his character used to be a native tracker hired during the Seven Years' War.
The Other Darrin: All of the returning characters from the original film have been recast; necessarily so since Scatman Crothers (Dick Halloran) passed away in 1986 and all three original Torrances (Danny Lloyd, Jack Nicholson, and Shelley Duvall) have all retired from acting. All flashbacks to the events from the original have been re-shot with new actors, albeit in such a way to match the original as closely as possible. Similarly, the returning ghosts from the Overlook are played by new actors for similar reasons.
Remake Cameo: Danny Lloyd, the original Danny Torrance from the Kubrick film, briefly appears as a spectator at the baseball game impressed by Bradley's skills.
Role Reprise: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Humberto Solorzano reprises his role as Jack Torrance from the dub of the original film.
Saved from Development Hell: The film had started production as early as 2014, but it wasn't until the runaway box-office success of It (2017) that Warner Bros. decided to properly greenlight Doctor Sleep.
Sequel Gap: The film was released in 2019, 39 years after its 1980 predecessor.
Shown Their Work: When the ghosts of the Overlook reappear at the end of the movie, people will recognize iconic faces from the movie such as the woman of Room 237, Delbert Grady, the twins and the "injured guest", while the others look like generic 1920s party guests. However the end credits reveal that most of them are ghosts from the original novel: the "injured guest" is now identified as Horace Derwent, the most famous owner of the Overlook and a big ghostly presence in the book, while three of the ghosts are Vito the Chopper, Vito T. Boorman and Roger Macassi, a criminal boss and his two bodyguards that got viciously killed in the Presidential Suite of the Overlook in the 1960s.
This is pushed even further. One of the ghosts is identified in the credits as "James Parris", a name that does not appear in the original novel. But this character appears in a deleted prologue of the novel, Before the Play, where he is identified as the second owner of the Overlook Hotel. This prologue was never included in regular editions of the book, and until the publishing of the Cemetery Dance's collector edition of The Shining it could only be read in old magazines or discreet Internet blogs.
The film's production originally started in 2014 with a script written by Akiva Goldsman, but it got mired in Development Hell until Mike Flanagan was brought on to re-write Goldsman's script. Evidently, enough of Goldsman's original script was still used that he would be credited as executive producer on the final film.
Reports indicate that Warner Bros. were looking into further expanding the Shining mythos with either a Dick Halloran prequel film (titled "Halloran") or a prequel focused on the Overlook Hotel (titled "Overlook Hotel"), but both prospects have been dropped with Doctor Sleep's mediocre box office results.
Mike Flanagan approached Jack Nicholson about making a cameo in this movie. Nicholson, who'd retired from acting several years earlier, turned down the offer but offered his best wishes to the cast and crew.
Word of Saint Paul: According to Rebecca Ferguson, the large needle in her character's hat is meant to dig deep underneath the fingernails of children so as to extract more purified Steam. Additionally, Ferguson has claimed that Rose the Hat is around 700 years old during the film's events.
on streaming services (e.g., Prime Video) during/following the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and resulting quarantine.