Ambitions were high with filmmaker Mike Flanagan’s “The Shining” sequel feature “Doctor Sleep”. The book was a best-seller, the cast was great, critics reviews had been very good, the success of “IT” had reinvigorated interest in Stephen King’s works – everything looked primed for a hit.
It didn’t happen. The film, budgeted in the $45-55 million range, ended up grossing only $72 million worldwide. Its opening weekend box-office came in at half that of projections and sank fairly fast – younger audiences in particular just stayed away.
That wasn’t expected by Warner Bros. Pictures who already had Flanagan lined up to direct a prequel centered around the telepathic character Dick Hallorann played by Scatman Crothers (in “The Shining”) and Carl Lumbly (in “Doctor Sleep”). Shortly after, the project quietly disappeared.
In a series of tweets on Sunday, “The Haunting of Hill House” and “Midnight Mass” creator Flanagan confirmed it was the poor performance at the box office of “Doctor Sleep” that sank the Hallorann movie in development.
Reacting to a fan-made poster of the unmade film, Flanagan said: “We were SO CLOSE. I’ll always regret this didn’t happen.” Straight up asked why the project got cancelled, he said: “Because of DOCTOR SLEEP’s box office performance, Warner Bros opted not to proceed with it. They control the rights, so that was that.”
Flanagan indicated in previous interviews a bunch of development work had already been done on the Hallorann movie with the plan to get Carl Lumbly back for framing scenes.
Flanagan isn’t short of work right now. He scored acclaim for another King adaptation with “Gerald’s Game,” and now has had multiple successful limited series on Netflix with two more – “The Midnight Club” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” – on the way.
Nor aare we short of King adaptations with “Firestarter” earlier this year, Netflix releasing “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” shortly, and Warners set to release a big “Salem’s Lot” adaptation in the near future.
Source: Twitter
