Last year Warner Bros. set out on a prequel to Stanley Kubrick's classic, The Shining, titled The Overlook Hotel. While this news wasn't exactly met with open arms, the talent hired to make it a reality was admittedly strong. Mark Romanek (Never Let Me Go) is directing from a screenplay by The Walking Dead's Glenn Mazzarra, who is basing the story from Stephen King's unpublished prologue. But those worried the film will somehow trample on what Kubrick was able to accomplish, producer James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, Truth) is ready to assuage those fears. He tells Collider...
"Honestly, I think people will really be excited about it, because it’s not like ’20 Years Before The Shining!’ I don’t want to give too much away about the story but the way [screenwriter] Glen [Mazzara] cracked it and the way Mark [Romanek] has sort of cracked it, it’s completely it’s own film, which I think is super smart. It’s not like, ‘When Scatman Crothers was young, he…’ it’s not that."
So there's some good news, at least, and the idea of looking back at how The Overlook Hotel came to be is potentially interesting. The story centers on the hotel's first owner, Bob T. Watson, a robber baron at the turn of the 20th century.
As of now there's no word on when filming on The Overlook Hotel could begin.
