Released: November 8, 2019

Directed By: Mike Flanagan

Screenplay By: Mike Flanagan

Based on the Book:  “Doctor Sleep” by Stephen King

Stars: Ewan McGregor, Rebecca Ferguson, Kyliegh Curran, Cliff Curtis and a bunch of other actors.

Plot: Years following the events of The Shining (1980), a now-adult Dan Torrance must protect a young girl with similar powers from a cult known as The True Knot, who prey on children with powers to remain immortal.

Taglines:  A new chapter from Stephen King, author of ‘The Shining’

How did this movie do?
Budget: $55 Million
Box Office: $72 Million

• Dan Stevens, Chris Evans, Matt Smith, and Jeremy Renner were considered and met with the director for the lead role. Ewan McGregor ended up being cast with Stephen King’s blessing.
  
  
• The actor who plays Diesel Doug (in the dark sunglasses) is James Flanagan, director Mike Flanagan’s younger brother.

• Following the events of The Shining, after receiving a settlement from the owners of the Overlook Hotel, Danny Torrance remains psychologically traumatized as his mother Wendy slowly recovers from her injuries. The two are living in Florida, but angry ghosts from the Overlook, including Mrs. Massey, the woman from Room 217, still want to find Danny and eventually consume his phenomenal “shining” power.
  
  
• When Dan first meets Abra in person, she suggests that he pose as her uncle to avoid looking suspicious. She subsequently calls him “Uncle Dan” as a term of endearment. In the novel, it’s revealed that they are, in fact, related: Abra’s mother is Dan’s half-sister, the result of an extramarital affair Jack Torrance had shortly before losing his job as a teacher.
  
  
• When Dan first meets Abra in person, she suggests that he pose as her uncle to avoid looking suspicious. She subsequently calls him “Uncle Dan” as a term of endearment. In the novel, it’s revealed that they are, in fact, related: Abra’s mother is Dan’s half-sister, the result of an extramarital affair Jack Torrance had shortly before losing his job as a teacher.
  
  
• In the novel, an infant Abra predicts the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks.
  
  
• In the novel, it is revealed that Dan Torrance is actually Abra’s uncle… Jack Torrance once had an affair with her grandmother.
  
  
• Room 217 vs. Room 237
  
  
• Like the character he portrays in the film, Ewan McGregor is a recovering alcoholic. This was one of the aspects that probably clinched him the role as one of the first things he said to director Mike Flanagan was that he was interested in exploring recovery.
  
  
• Abra calls Rose “hyena” over and over again in the book. It’s her way of letting Rose know that she’s a vicious little predator, not a powerful god as she sees herself. These scenes were not included in the movie.
  
  
• The book has a drastically different ending, with Dan living to help Abra start fighting her own battle with alcohol abuse as a teenager. It also comes out in the book that Jack Torrance had the shine too, and like Dan and Abra, was self-medicating himself with alcohol. It’s made much more explicit in the book that alcohol numbs and silences the shine.
  
  
• Abra’s grandmother “Momo” has a far more prominent role in the book as a second adult who understands how special Abra is, even if she cannot share in her shine. For example, a critical scene in the book has Dan confronting Abra’s mother with how similar they look, and Momo reveals her previous relationship with Jack Torrance. In the movie, Momo is only mentioned in passing.
  
  
• In the epilogue, Dan celebrates 15 years of sobriety and attends Abra’s 15th birthday party. He tells her about the patterns of alcoholism and violent behavior that run in his family and warns her not to repeat them by starting to drink or submitting to rage. Abra agrees that she will behave, but before they can finish the conversation, Dan is called back to his hospice, where he comforts a dying colleague who had antagonized him in the past.

• Many of Rose’s accessories are trinkets from various children Rose has killed, including bracelets, hairbands, toys, and even a bicycle chain (woven into her hair). Ferguson wanted to wear “trophies” of her victims, hidden in plain sight.
  
  
• According to director Mike Flanagan, the performance of Jacob Tremblay during the first take of his death scene was so intense that it surprised and scared the other actors, including Rebecca Ferguson, who was so horrified she was stammering and “couldn’t get her lines out”. When the scene was over, a grinning Tremblay jumped up, covered in fake blood, high-fived his father and walked over to the craft service to get a snack, leaving Ferguson and the rest of the cast “shell-shocked and traumatized”.
  
  
• Mike Flanagan painstakingly recreated the sets of the Overlook Hotel from blueprints acquired from Stanley Kubrick’s estate.
  
  
• John Dalton’s (Bruce Greenwood) room, in which Danny is interviewed for the orderly position, is identical to Stuart Ullman’s office where Jack Torrance was interviewed in for the caretaker job in The Shining (1980) (1980), right down to the paint color and the little American flag on the right side of the desk.
  
  
• In the scene where hospital cat Azzie jumps on the desk in front of Dan, before he follows her to what should be an empty room, he puts down the magazine he was reading. It’s the same January 1978 issue of Playgirl Magazine his father, Jack Torrance, read in the lobby of The Overlook while waiting for Stuart Ullman and Bill Watson on Closing Day in The Shining (1980).
  
  
• Stephen King first got the idea for Doctor Sleep in 1998 at a book signing when somebody asked him what happened to Danny Torrance from his novel ‘The Shining’. This was a question King had often asked himself, as well as what would have happened to Jack Torrance had he found AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). When people kept repeating the question, King always jokingly replied that Danny eventually married Charlene McGee, the girl from Firestarter (1984). However, King eventually started thinking seriously about how old Danny was and what happened to Wendy and decided to find the answers with a sequel, but it was a tall order.
  
  
• The cat Azzie is based on Oscar, a tabby cat who resides at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Rhode Island. Oscar appears able to predict the impending death of terminally ill patients. He will sit or sleep by their beds for a few hours before they die. Since the publication of an article featuring Oscar in a New England medical journal in 2007, Oscar has been present for over 100 patient deaths.
  
  
• The name of the cat that enters the room of the patients who are next to die in the hospice, Rivington House, is “Azzy,” which is short for Azrael, who is the Angel of Death.
  
  
• Mike Flanagan reportedly had a humorous nickname for the cat, and usually referred to Azzie as “Azzhole” during production, and “Bonkers the Death Cat” in post-production.
  
  
• Doctor Sleep explores that not only humans shine, but animals can, too. The cat shines, as it can determine when people are about to die.
  
  
• The use of the heartbeat is an homage to The Shining (1980). Throughout Doctor Sleep (2019), the tempo of the heartbeat is used to increase or decrease tension.
  
  
• The use of the heartbeat is an homage to The Shining (1980). Throughout Doctor Sleep (2019), the tempo of the heartbeat is used to increase or decrease tension.
  
  
• The “Death Flies” Dan sees are taken directly from the novel and explained later in the film. They may be symbolically linked to the flies that are released by John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) whenever he cures a person from disease in The Green Mile (1999), another Stephen King adaptation.
  
  
• Hallorann says “Ka is a wheel, Doc.” This is a direct mantra from the Dark Tower book series. It means that “destiny is a wheel,” and that it brings us back to the same place to face our mistakes and defeats until we learn from them.
  
  
• Rose the Hat exchanging flowers with a little girl by a riverbank is a homage to an iconic scene of a little girl giving flowers to the Monster by the river in Frankenstein (1931).
  
  
• When Abra arrives in town, a sign that says “Elm Street” can be seen. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was a horror film about a killer who kills teens in their sleep.
  
  
• Actor Henry Thomas had to shave his head and wear a wig to match the hairline of Jack Torrance from The Shining (1980).
  
  
• According to Rebecca Ferguson, the hatpin in her character’s hat digs deep underneath the fingernails of children to extract more purified steam