Ahead of the Doctor Sleep trailer debut today (check it out by clicking here!), director Mike Flanagan was on-hand at a special preview and spoke to us about the film!
Doctor Sleep opens with Ewan McGregor as the grown-up Danny Torrance, now an adult at rock bottom of a drinking problem.
“He hasn’t used his ‘shine’ in decades,” explains Flanagan, “but now uses it for comfort in his job at a nursing home.”
When Dan senses a resident is going to die, he uses his ability to ease them into a painless, fearless death. Thus, he becomes known as Doctor Sleep.
You will notice in the trailer that there are a lot of scenes that seem to be from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining; however, Flanagan says there’s only one reused sequence.
“The only scene we used from the Kubrick film was the bloody elevator,” admits Flanagan. The rest of the Overlook scenes were shot by Flanagan, last year, in a studio in Atlanta.
While Flanagan sees The Shining as a story about addiction, he sees Doctor Sleep as the other side of the coin. It is a story about recovery.
“It’s not often you meet the hero of a story when he is puking,” jokes Flanagan.
McGregor turned out to be a huge fan of The Shining and he was eager to jump into the role. It helped that Flanagan felt like McGregor was “trusted” among movie fans. When it came to casting Abra, the young lead to play opposite Danny, Flanagan says they looked at nine hundred girls for the role. Newcomer Kyliegh Curran sent in her tape on her own, and this was her first role. “It’s exciting,” Flanagan enthuses. “We got to see the birth of a movie star.”
One of the most difficult parts of filming Doctor Sleep for Flanagan was trying to decide which to honor: King’s novel or Kubrick’s film – which King notoriously hated. He walked a tightrope, and managed to honor both. “Both King and the Kubrick Estate liked the film!” he told us.
You will get your chance to see Doctor Sleep when it hits theaters November 8th.
Doctor Sleep
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