Several years ago filmmaker Mark Romanek (“Never Let Me Go,” “One Hour Photo”) came up with “The Overlook Hotel,” a proposed prequel to “The Shining”.
Based on the original prologue that author Stephen King wrote and then scrapped from his 1977 novel, the period tale would have been set in the early 20th century and center on Bob T. Watson, a robber baron who ventured through the Colorado Rockies and built the Overlook Hotel.
That film never happened, and the property was revisited last year with “Doctor Sleep,” a sequel that directly adapts King’s follow-up book and was helmed by Mike Flanagan. That film scored good reviews but tepid box-office, nixing any chance of another visit to the franchise anytime soon.
Romanek is doing promotional rounds this week for Amazon’s new “Tales From the Loop” series and the topic of the abandoned ‘Overlook’ project came up. Romanek was asked by Collider if the film would remain shelved:
“It seems so. I mean, it’s a great script I think, it was based on a prologue to the novel that Stephen King wrote and then that prologue was cut for length. And so it’s based on Stephen King. It’s not just something somebody made up, and it’s more of an origin story on the, almost like a Western or a wilderness story, going back to the construction and the desecration of the Indian burial grounds, and the construction of the Overlook Hotel and to its meaning to its opening night.
We wrote the script, it’s a really great script. The problem is it’s really expensive, it kind of reads like ‘The Revenant’ or ‘Heaven’s Gate’ or something and I think they wanted to try ‘Doctor Sleep’ to see if – my impression is they wanted to see if there was this sort of ‘Shining’ universe that would have financial life through them or artistic life with the audience. And I think ‘Doctor Sleep’ did just sort of okay, and given that our script is so costly, it’s a little dead in the water right now. But you never know, it’s a weird business. It’s a very good script. I’m proud of the script.”
Drafts of the script were originally done by former “Walking Dead” showrunner Glen Mazzara, and Romanek himself re-wrote it when he signed on to direct. However “Doctor Sleep” just didn’t do well enough to justify more.
