Good news, everyone!Mike Flanagan’sDoctor Sleephas been given full approval by the MPAA to fuck your entire day up. The director confirmed that his film has received an R-rating for disturbing and violent content, some bloody images, language, nudity, and drug use. “Sound about right,” Flanaganwrote.
Like theStephen Kingbook it’s based on,Doctor Sleepis a sequel to one of the most iconic horror stories ever told,The Shining.The film starsEwan McGregoras an adult Danny Torrance, decades after his father Jack’s ghost-assisted breakdown inside the Overlook Hotel. When Collider’s own Haleigh Foutchtalked to Flanagan, the filmmaker discussed the tricky proposition of adapting the novel but also setting it in the same universe asStanley Kubrick’sThe Shiningfilm starringJack Nicholson, which King is famously not too keen on.
“I went back to the book first and the big conversation that we had to have was about whether or not we could still do a faithful adaptation of the novel as King has laid it out while inhabiting the universe that Kubrick had created,” Flanagan explained. “And that was a conversation that we had to have with Stephen King to kick the whole thing off. And if that conversation hadn’t gone the way it went, we wouldn’t have done the film.
Doctor Sleephits theaters on November 8 and also starsRebecca Ferguson,Cliff Curtis,Bruce Greenwood, andJacob Tremblay. Here is the official synopsis, followed by a few links for further reading.
Still irrevocably scarred by the trauma he endured as a child at the Overlook, Dan Torrance has fought to find some semblance of peace. But that peace is shattered when he encounters Abra, courageous teenager with her own powerful extrasensory gift, known as the “shine.” Instinctively recognizing that Dan shares her power, Abra has sought him out, desperate for his help against the merciless Rose the Hat and her followers, The True Knot, who feed off the shine of innocents in their quest for immortality.
Forming an unlikely alliance, Dan and Abra engage in a brutal life-or-death battle with Rose. Abra’s innocence and fearless embrace of her shine compel Dan to call upon his own powers as never before — at once facing his fears and reawakening ghosts of the past.
