Sequel to ‘The Shining’ to be published 36 years after original works

Author Stephen King will publish the sequel to ‘The Shining’ next September...

Stephen King has revealed on his website that he will publish the sequel to his classic horror story ‘The Shining’ on September 24th next year. This means that the sequel will come 36 years after the original, which was published in 1977. 

The long overdue sequel will be called ‘Doctor Sleep’, and will focus on Danny Torrance, the young boy who survived the horrific story told in ‘The Shining’. Danny, who is an adult in the new story, works at a hospice and uses his ‘shining’ abilities to help patients die without pain.

According to the Mail Online the plot involves Danny meeting a 12-year-old Abra Stone, who has the ‘brightest shining ever seen’, as well as a gang of psychic vampires that he will eventually battle against. 

‘The Shining’, one of King’s most successful works, has sold more than a million copies since its publication.

It revolved around the Torrance family who moved to the Overlook Hotel in Colorado where Jack, Danny’s father, worked as caretaker over the winter. Jack becomes possessed and attacks his family prompting Danny, who has psychic abilities, to use these to strengthen the hotel’s ghosts so he and his mother Wendy can escape. 

A Hollywood film based on the novel was produced and directed by the late Stanley Kubrick three years after the novel’s release. There is no word yet whether ‘Doctor Sleep’ will also be turned into a movie, although it is thought it would put a lot of pressure on whoever is chosen to direct it, considering King’s infamous dislike of the film version of ‘The Shining’. 

King believes the late Kubrick cut out much of the supernatural element of the book, according to the Mail Online, mainly because the director himself was unable to grasp it. He said: “That was the basic flaw: because he couldn’t believe, he couldn’t make the film believable to others.”