Redrum! Redrum! The first trailer for Doctor Sleep is here, and it provides the first look at the adaptation of Stephen King’s sequel to one of the scariest books — and movies — ever made, The Shining.
Written and directed by The Haunting of Hill House and Oculus director Mike Flanagan, Doctor Sleep is set 40 years after the terrifying events of The Shining, and follows Danny Torrance as he contends with yet another supernatural threat. Ewan McGregor portrays Torrance in the film, which hits theaters November 8.
Along with giving audiences a look at the grown-up (but still traumatized) Dan Torrance, whose life is thrown back into nightmarish chaos when he meets a teenage girl who shares his extrasensory gift, the trailer also brings audiences back to the infamous Overlook Hotel. Hunted by a group that feeds on their “shining” ability, Dan and the girl, Abra (Kyliegh Curran), must find a way to use their abilities while confronting Dan’s nightmares of the past.
Joining McGregor and Curran in the cast are Mission: Impossible series actress Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat, the leader of the group tormenting Dan and Abra.
Flanagan is joined behind the camera by several frequent collaborators, including many of the production team on The Haunting of Hill House, the hit Netflix horror series. Both Hill House director of photography Michael Fimognari and composer The Newton Brothers return for Doctor Sleep, and the tone of the trailer feels eerily similar to that of the streaming series.
Doctor Sleep is one of several projects based on King’s novels currently in development at Warner Bros. Pictures, with a prequel to The Shining also in the works titled Overlook Hotel. The massive success of It — based on King’s novel of the same name — in theaters has given many of these projects at Warner Bros. and other studios some added momentum, with It: Chapter Two hitting theaters just a few months before Doctor Sleep on September 6.
Published more than three decades after The Shining, Doctor Sleep served as a sequel to the 1977 novel. The Shining was adapted twice for the screen, with Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film widely regarded as one of the scariest horror movies ever made, and a 1997 television miniseries that more closely followed King’s story also earned critical acclaim.
