Here Comes That THE SHINING Prequel You Never Asked For

One of these days I'm going to go back and re-read all those Stephen King books I first encountered in middle school, a time in my life when I was about as knowledgable as a fully mature ferret and only twice as handsome.

I say that because my memories of The Shining are now less than dim. I remember it mostly for its divergence from the Stanley Kubrick film (or vice versa, I suppose). What I don't remember is the dense, richly layered, epic world building King put together.

But it must have been there. Not only is Stephen King about to release a sequel called Doctor Sleep (second cousin to Doctor Teeth), but ex-The Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara is possibly going to write a prequel. So I clearly missed the part where the story of a guy going crazy in a hotel is just one piece of a very large saga.

The prequel will be called The Overlook Hotel. No word yet on what it's about or where it takes place, though.

So if you read The Shining or watched one of its two movie versions and wondered what happened before all the interesting stuff happened, this movie is for you! How many cute connections to Kubrick's film can they throw in? How lavishly will they recreate Kubrick's version of the hotel? How much will all this fidelity to an inferior vision of The Shining piss Stephen King off? Only one way to find out. Unfortunately.

More as this develops. For instance, we'll definitely put something up when Colin Farrell gets cast.