Director discusses The Overlook Hotel, abandoned prequel to The Shining

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Seven years ago, it was announced that Warner Bros. had hired former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara to write a prequel to THE SHINING that would be called THE OVERLOOK HOTEL. A year later, ONE HOUR PHOTO director Mark Romanek (who famously departed the 2010 version of THE WOLFMAN over creative differences) signed on to take the helm of that prequel.

The film was going to tell 

the origin story of the Overlook Hotel through the eyes of its first owner, Bob T. Watson. A robber baron at the turn of the 20th century, Watson scaled the remote peaks of the Colorado Rockies to build the grandest resort in America, and a place he and his family would also call home.

Of course, THE OVERLOOK HOTEL never made it into production. The project got shelved when Warner Bros. decided to focus on an adaptation of Stephen King's own THE SHINING follow-up, his 2013 novel DOCTOR SLEEP, instead… and given that film's underwhelming box office, it's not likely that the studio is going to want to revisit THE SHINING territory again any time soon.

Speaking with Collider, Romanek confirmed that he doesn't think THE OVERLOOK HOTEL is going to happen. 

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 some thing 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.

Actually 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."

Romanek also said he was 

stupidly undaunted by its relationship to The Shining, because it takes place decades and decades before and there’s very little specific visual crossover. It was just, I thought, a really great story, based on Stephen King."

I would gladly watch a series of films set in the world of THE SHINING and DOCTOR SLEEP. Give me THE OVERLOOK HOTEL, make that Dick Hallorann prequel, maybe even a movie about Rose the Hat. But it looks like THE SHINING and DOCTOR SLEEP will be standing alone for a while.