Doctor Sleep Set Visit: Everything We Learned

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

A few months back I was just sitting down to start my shift over at AITH when I got an email. It said "Set-Visit Time Sensitive." I've been offered a few set-visits here and there over my two years working for JoBlo and AITH, and I, unfortunately, had to pass on them for one reason or another. I'm not going to name them off here as it would just result in tears and me having to seriously rethink my life choices thus far. But basically, they were all amazing opportunities. That said, I'm a father of three and so my time set aside for jaunts around the country and/or the globe is kind of lacking. And so I figured this set-visit invitation would go the same route as all the others: Thank you but unfortunately no thank you. Cursed with this lame foresight I clicked the email all the same and that's when everything changed. 

I was being asked to grace my presence upon the set of director Mike Flanagan's highly anticipated adaptation of Stephen King's DOCTOR SLEEP! The hell with other responsibilities, I said, and as quickly as I could, replied, "I'm in!" It wasn't more than a minute later that I was hit with a barrage of emails asking me to confirm all kinds of info and set my travel plans into motion. Wow, this is moving fast! I quickly figured I'd let my girlfriend know about the visit as soon as I could, and started making plans to fly out of my local airport on Friday morning (this was all on a Wednesday) and arrive in Atalanta, Georgia Friday afternoon where I would then be shuttled straight to set with a gaggle of other horror journalists. 

Truth be told, it was kinda the Atlanta Georgia bit that sold me as a keeper. After all, I live in Florida and so Georgia is a mere hop, skip, and 45 minutes flight away. Sold. I quickly told my girlfriend about the plans and she helped me clear the calendar as fast as we could. Got to love that woman. 🙂 Now, for those of you out there that aren't aware of just how monumental of a set-visit this was, Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Stephen King's DOCTOR SLEEP is, in fact, a sequel to King's classic novel THE SHINING! The novel picks up with young Danny Torrance all grown up and forced to protect a young girl with the same gift of the Shining from a group of semi-vampires looking to harvest her shining powers – or her "Steam" as the novel calls it.

As we all know by this point in time, King was not a fan of director Stanly Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of THE SHINING starring Jack Nicholson. So how are Mike Flanagan and his cast and crew going to handle this? Do you take on the Kubrick continuity, now firmly placed within the heads and hearts of horror fans all across the globe? Or do you stay true to the King of Horror and keep Dick Holleran alive and The Overlook burnt to the ground? What's a director to do!? Well, as much as I enjoyed King's source novel, I'm here to finally tell all of you that this upcoming film adaptation is all set to be a different animal altogether. Yes, I can now confirm with sky-high enthusiasm that DOCTOR SLEEP is not just a worthy adaptation of the novel, but an official sequel to Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING!

Hoo-ray! How do I know this you might ask? Well, I know this because when I finally arrived on-set deep in the hills of rural Georgia, we were ushered in a series of airport hangars which held the film's sets. But these were not just any old sets, mind you. After we signed our second round of NDA's we were brought into dark hangar #1… and straight onto a total re-creation of the Overlook Hotel! In fact, the very first thing I saw was straight down the "Blue Hallway" and fully expected to see the twin ghost girls standing at the other end. That's one hell of a way to kick all of this off, isn't it? After all, in King's source novel THE SHINING, The Overlook is destroyed at the end, thus in his follow-up novel DOCTOR SLEEP the haunted hotel is no more and the book's third act all takes place in a campground located on the spot where the original Overlook was located. Wa, wa. But as we were led through the winding corridors of this dark hangar were saw with amazing clarity that The Overlook – all battered up and abandon these 40 years later – will play a big part in Flanagan's version of DOCTOR SLEEP. 

From that first look down the Blue Hallway, we were led around the outskirts of the set where he saw writer-director Mike Flanagan typing away on his laptop in one of the hotel rooms. We were whisked by the man at the time, and taken to a set of monitors where we watched a scene being filmed. The scene in question follows Jocelin Donahue (who genre fans may know from Ti West's HOUSE OF THE DEVIL or James Wan's INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2). In DOCTOR SLEEP, she will be playing the mother of our young heroine, Abra Stone. As far as I know, this information had not been revealed at the time of the set-visit (or at the time of this typing) so it was a major surprise for me. I love HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and Donahue is one of our beloved genre's top up-and-coming scream queens.

The scene we watched centered on her tucking young six-year-old Adra into bed. SIDE NOTE: This is a flashback of sorts as the movie's "real Abra" is played by ten-year-old semi-newcomer, Kyliegh Curran. In the scene, mama Donahue lays young Abra down for bed and they talked about an incident with "spoons on the ceiling." This is a scene those of you that have also read King's novel will know. For everyone else, let me lay it out for you. In the book, young Adra displays her growing powers in a variety of ways. She predicts 9/11 as an infant (by crying nonstop), and playing the piano in her sleep (and while in another room). But it all comes to a head at the age of six when she has a birthday party with a clown (not Pennywise), and the clown does a trick with a spoon and so Abra thinks she'll do a trick as well. Cue a thunderous crash and the adults rush into the house, finding every spoon in the kitchen hanging upside down on the ceiling. It's a great scene in the book and it's good to know that we can more than expect said scene to play out on the big screen in Flanagan's upcoming film.

From there I was taken into the one and only Room 237 (a dream come true). There I sat down for interviews with the likes of producer Trevor Macy (THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE), director Mike Flanagan, and actors Ewan McGregor (who plays adult Danny Torrance) and the above-mentioned Kyliegh Curran. After the interviews, I was taken to another hangar across the lot. Flanagan was off directing the Abra spoons scene, and as I was ushered towards the next set, Flanagan came literally running up behind us like a kid at Christmas. He said he couldn't miss this and he had to see our faces when we entered this next set. Oh, boy, I think, this is gonna be good. But then as we all entered with Flanagan leading the way, I never expected to see what we saw. A complete and total "to the logs in the fireplace" recreation of The Colorado Lounge!

For those that might not know, the Colorado Lounge is where Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance in Kubrick's film writes each day. You know the room. This re-creation set was massive and beyond amazing. It was as if we stepped out of reality and straight into Kubrick's film. The scale was massive and all I could think was "eat your heart out Spielberg." After all, Spielberg and crew recently rebuilt the infamous location for READY PLAYER ONE – but THEY did it digitally. No CGI here, folks. It's all real. And I was there.

From there Flanagan led us up to the second floor of the set where – get this shite – they had an adult-scale tricycle decked out to look EXACTLY like the one young Danny rode in the original. I couldn't pass up the opportunity. So, yes, I rode an adult-sized replica of Danny's tricycle from THE SHINING along the same path he takes in the film, right up to the door for the infamous Room 237. It was spot-on. We then took a few choice pics here and there around the set (which hopefully will be released by the time this article is set to go live) and then we were sent along our merry way. All of us drunk on the utter fanboy delight we could have never thought we'd experience. 

Without further ado, here's some killer info we pulled from the entire visit.

• Flanagan asked his agents to start looking into DOCTOR SLEEP three years ago. 
• This film will be a faithful adaptation of King's novel.
• The script was 140 pages.
• The cast and crew shot DOCTOR SLEEP over the course of 50 days. We visited on day 38-39.
• Casting Danny was "agonizing" because they had so many amazing options.
• Ewan McGregor and Mike Flanagan were supposed to meet for 20 minutes but ended up talking for 90. They talked a lot about THE SHINING, sobriety, and their personal lives, and at the end of this feature-length meeting, Flanagan knew Ewan was the man to play Danny. 
• King okayed Ewan for the role.
• Flanagan didn't have any actors in mind while writing the script.
• Flanagan calls Rose the Hat "one of the most complete and interesting King antagonists" and says she is "true to King's classic villains."
• Three minutes into his first Skype with Rebecca Ferguson, Flanagan knew she was Rose. He calls her performance "jaw-dropping"
• Flanagan says that Rose the Hat "is a villain for the ages."
• Alex Essoe will be playing Wendy Torrance, Danny's mother, in this new film. Wendy was originally played by Shelley Duvall in The Shining.
• Carl Lumbly is playing Dick Hallorann, who was killed in the Kubrick version so… I guess we'll have to see what happens with that. Dick was originally played by Scatman Crothers in The Shining.
• The film will be more of a direct sequel to Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING than King's original novel.
• Stephen King was enthusiastic about the new direction and helped the production out with things such as casting.
• The film will revisit classic locations from the first film, mainly The Overlook Hotel!
• Macy and Flanagan are fans of both King's novel and Kubrick's film and don't want to pick a side in the "divorce".
• They are not trying to "out Kubrick Kubrick"
• There was never a discussion about adapting the book into a Limited TV series.
• There will be Easter eggs for fans of both King's work and Flanagan's.
• Stephen King approved of the script.
• This will be an R-rated adaptation.
• Flanagan was attracted by the theme of "the impact of childhood trauma in adults."
• The film will combine the worlds of King's novel and Kubrick's film to make King feel satisfied while honoring the legacy of the Kubrick film. 
• Flanagan feels that revisiting Danny Torrance but not revisiting The Overlook would have been a wasted opportunity.
• Flanagan felt he had to get King's approval to bring back the Overlook. If King wouldn't have been supportive of the idea, Flanagan says he wouldn't have made the movie. 
• Flanagan is actually MORE nervous following up his hit adaptation of King's "unfilmable" novel GERALD'S GAME. 
• There will be intentional homages to Kubrick's style in the film.
• DOCTOR SLEEP uses Kubrick's film as canon.
• Flanagan was not hired to direct DOCTOR SLEEP, instead, he pitched it to Warner Bros.
• The crew tried to use practical effects whenever they could to ground the film.
• There will be effects-heavy sequences.
• There was nothing in the book that they had to cut because they couldn't film it. 
• The three stories of Danny Torrance, Abra Stone, and Rose the Hat won't collide until the final act.
• This film will be taking the True Knot in a different direction. Rebecca and the cast helped shape a new darker version of the True Knot, which will be much younger. 
• The True Knot will be a true family. Rose the Hat is more "maternal" than she was in the book.
• Flanagan's brother plays one of the members of the true knot, Diesel Doug. 
• Flanagan pitched OCULUS as a portable Overlook Hotel. 
• The Oculus mirror will be in the Overlook Hotel.
• Flanagan saw THE SHINING in eighth grade at a sleepover and it terrified him. It defined what scary is to him. 
• Flanagan hates jump scares and says the best thing about Kubrick's film is that it contains ZERO jumpscares.
• Flanagan read the book THE SHINING in high school. 
• Flanagan read DOCTOR SLEEP the day it came out and loved it. 
• Flanagan says THE SHINING is about addiction and DOCTOR SLEEP is about recovery.
• Flanagan says he is "just trying to recreate the feeling he had when he read the book." 
• The film follows the structure of King's book.
• We'll meet Danny at his Rock Bottom. The first act is watching him try to crawl his way out. 
• Flanagan had the time of his life making the movie.
• Flanagan thinks Stephen King's PET SEMATARY is the scariest book he has ever read and would have loved to helm the recent re-adaptation of the film. 
• On top of PET SEMATARY, Flanagan also wants to make movies based on King novels such as LISEY'S STORY, and especially THE STAND. He loves Mick Garris' miniseries and calls the book a "towering work of American literature."

Mike's Final Thoughts: So that's a wrap on my visit to the set of director Mike Flanagan's upcoming adaptation of Stephen King's DOCTOR SLEEP aka THE SHINING 2. There are still more than a few details that are unknown at this time, such as just who the hell young Jacob Trembly (ROOM, THE PREDATOR) is playing, and we were not shown sets for such classics from Stanly Kubrick's THE SHINING such as The Hedge Maze and the Ballroom. But I have to assume, with all the love and detail those involved with this new production have thrown at the bits and pieces of the film that we were lucky enough to see, I can bet that all of those classic locations – and more! – will be making an appearance come November. Overall, the experience was the absolute best I've ever had in my life, next to my daughter being born. Flanagan was as enthusiastic as a kid at Christmas, and the sets were recreated (and appropriately aged) to the tiniest detail. On top of all that, star Ewan McGregor was a delight and comes across as a man destined to play good old Danny Torrance as a grown-up. All the pieces presented at this set-visit (my first ever by the way) were more than enough to lead me to think – scratch that – KNOW that DOCTOR SLEEP is going to be one of the best horror movies of 2019!