Ewan McGregor to star as Danny Torrance in Shining sequel Doctor Sleep

Ewan McGregor is to play the grown up Danny Torrance, the boy with special powers from Stephen King’s The Shining, in the forthcoming adaptation of its sequel, Doctor Sleep.

Directing will be Mike Flanagan, who adapted Stephen King’s short novel Gerald’s Game for Netflix last year.

According to Variety, King has given his blessing to McGregor taking on the role.

The novel was published in 2013, and found Danny Torrance still carrying with him the trauma of the events of the Overlook Hotel into adulthood.

He’s also adopted the weaknesses of his father, played by Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of King’s 1977 novel, and is prone to anger and heavy drinking, spending years as a drifter.

Danny also struggles to control his ‘shining’ powers, which he dulls with alcohol.

But on deciding to embrace sobriety, he begins working at a hospice where he finds his powers can provide comfort to dying patients, and meets a young girl with similar powers to his own.

As well as the Doctor Sleep film, Warner Bros has long been developing a prequel to The Shining, based around the Overlook, the isolated hotel which provided the backdrop for the first movie.

It starred Nicholson as Jack Torrance, taken on as the hotel’s caretaker when it closes for the winter season and who begins to lose his mind following a series of visions, with Danny Lloyd and Shelley Duvall as the wife and child he terrorises in the final act.

King famously disliked Kubrick’s movie, which disappointed at the box office, but became a horror classic.

Speaking to Deadline in 2016, he said: “I think The Shining is a beautiful film and it looks terrific and as I’ve said before, it’s like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it.

“In that sense, when it opened, a lot of the reviews weren’t very favorable and I was one of those reviewers. I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn’t care for it much.”

Read more
Alec Baldwin says he’d beat Trump in the next election
Paul Hogan for ‘new Crocodile Dundee movie’
Ron Howard responds to Solo failure