A stage adaptation of Stephen King’s novel The Shining is still heading for the West End stage.
Back in March 2022, The Shining was said to be on track for a January 2023 premiere, with rehearsals starting in London in autumn 2022. A Broadway transfer was also rumoured to be in the works.
Clearly that didn’t happen, but one of the producers of the show, Colin Callender, has now given an update.
A stage version of The Shining has been on the cards for years, with rumours first surfacing in 2017.
Negotiations are currently underway with West End theatre owners to find a home for the show, which will open next year in London.
The Shining is set to be produced by the team behind hit Broadway and West End show Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – Colin Callender’s Playground Entertainment (Wolf Hall, All Creatures Great and Small), and Sonia Friedman’s Sonia Friedman Productions (The Book of Mormon, Mean Girls, Oedipus, Juno and the Paycock).
The stage adaptation is based on Stephen King’s classic 1977 horror novel The Shining, famously adapted into a 1980 movie produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, and Danny Lloyd.
The stage production of The Shining will stick closer to the plot of the novel.
Sir Colin said in a recent meeting of the Broadcasting Press Guild that: “Stephen King hated the movie. He thought Jack Nicholson was just a two-dimensional villain and he couldn’t stand Shelley Duvall. The book is partly autobiographical – the alcoholic writer, that’s what it’s really about, and the first 115 pages of the book are about the father, husband, teacher, who is an alcoholic and trying to write, and who is having trouble with his son and his wife. All that leads to a climax where going to the hotel is the final straw. None of that is in the film… so the play is rooted in character in the way that I think Stephen King didn’t feel the film was”.
The novel is being adapted by Tony Award-winner Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time).
The director of the play was originally set to be Belgian director Ivo van Hove, whose recent projects include West End musical Opening Night starring Sheridan Smith, and A Little Life starring James Norton.
In terms of casting, Ben Stiller was rumoured to be starring in the show as crazed father Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in the movie, although no casting has currently been confirmed for the project.
Colin Callendar is currently promoting his new TV project, the final TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy The Mirror and the Light, which launches on BBC One this Sunday. The book was also adapted for the stage by Hilary Mantel and Ben Miles, produced by the RSC.
More about The Shining tickets in London
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