Stephen King not keen on Warner Bros' “Shining” prequel

PanARMENIAN.Net - Stephen King is not keen on Warner Bros' planned Shining prequel. The writer has questioned whether the studio retains the rights to his novel, Digital Spy said.

Former Walking Dead showrunner Glen Mazzara has been reported to be working on an adaptation of 'Before the Play' - the prologue King wrote for his 1977 novel than was dropped before publication - under the title The Overlook Hotel.

"There's a real question about whether or not they have the rights to 'Before the Play,' which was the prologue cut from the book - because the epilogue to the book was called 'After the Play'," King told Entertainment Weekly. "So they were bookends, and there was really scary stuff in that prologue that wouldn't make a bad movie.

"Am I eager to see that happen? No, I am not. And there's some real question about what rights Warner Bros does still have. The Shining is such an old book now that the copyright comes back to me. Arguably, the film rights lapse - so we'll see. We're looking into that."

King was famously underwhelmed by Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of the novel.

"I'm not saying I would put a stop to the project, because I'm sort of a nice guy," he continued. "When I was a kid, my mother said, 'Stephen, if you were a girl, you'd always be pregnant'.

"I have a tendency to let people develop things. I'm always curious to see what will happen. But you know what? I would be just as happy if it didn't happen."

King is currently working on Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining.