WTF: Stephen King Is Planning A Sequel To The Shining?!

Stephen King has been letting a lot of juicy news tidbits slip while making book tour appearances. His latest admission is almost unbelievable. While appearing at Toronto's Canon Theatre, King dropped the bombshell during his on stage interview with director David Cronenberg that he began working on a sequel to The Shining last summer.

That's right... a SEQUEL to THE SHINING.

According to the report from Torontoist, King wanted to revisit Danny Torrance, who was last seen on the page (spoilers coming up for the book and moie The Shining) recovering from his ordeal at the Overlook Hotel at a resort in Maine with fellow survivors Wendy Torrance and chef Dick Halloran (who had a much different fate in the Kubrick film adaptation), who has become the head chef.

King breifly laid out his tenative plan for the novel, which would see the emotionally scarred kid, now a 40-year-old orderly at a hospice for the terminally ill in upstate New York. But Danny's real job is to "visit with patients who are just about to pass on to the other side, and to help them make that journey with the aid of his mysterious powers." And on the side, Danny bets on the horse races, a trick he learned from his old friend Dick. The proposed title for the book is "Doctor Sleep."

Of course, King has yet to start writing the book, and right now the whole thing only exists as an idea — an idea that King admits that if he keeps talking about it too much he's might talk himself out of writing it all together. We can only hope.

Some stories don't need a next chapter, and are best left alone. I think King's idea for a "sleep doctor" might be worth exploring, but why must it involve characters from The Shining? Why couldn't King use the the concept as inspiration to create some new characters? I don't really think we need to see where Danny Torance has been all these years. I hope that I will never have to watch a big screen adaptation of The Shining 2: Doctor Sleep directed by Brett Ratner, or even Frank Darabont, for that matter.

Discuss: Do you want to read a sequel to The Shining?

via: cinematical